Don Rickles Quotes

A lot of my humor centers on the act of telling jokes and I think this can prevent certain audiences from suspending their feeling of disbelief. It might piss a few people off, but I can't help it.

In comedy, though, it's good to get feedback from the audience about what they find funny.

Jackie Gleason said that comedy is the most exacting form of dramatic art, because it has an instant critic: laughter.

We don't apologize for a joke. We are comics. We are here to make you laugh. If you don't get it, then don't watch us.

When you're a stand-up, you play in front of 600 people, and it's all about timing. I could never do stand-up comedy; it would be way too hard for me.

I wanted to be a comedian.

The bigger the audience, the better with comedy.

When I'm playing comedy, I never do 'jokes.' Sometimes I'll deliver a line in a way I think is more likely to get a laugh, but all the best comedy is played straight. What's funny is the way it hits the world around it or the way it hits the other characters.

Comedy is very controlling - you are making people laugh.

Doing drama is, in a sense, easier. In doing comedy, if you don't get that laugh, there's something wrong.

it is hard to find new jokes. What I need is new audiences.

My foray into comedy was to avoid getting a job.

I've committed myself to perfecting the art of the straight man. I try really hard not to crack up.

Just because you're laughing, it doesn't mean the audience will, necessarily.

In a lot of comedy shows, there's a safety net where you don't assume anything of real consequence will happen.

All of my comedian friends are some of the best joke writers in the world.

I know that if any other comedian came up to me questioning something I did or said, it would be literally settled in a heartbeat. I love comedy. I give to comedy. I don't take from comedy.

I feel that I'm a stand-up comedian more than anything else, that's my job.

I'm not a fan of stand-up comedy, personally. But some of them are incredibly skilled.

I had a standup act, and I ended up turning it into something that was really watered down and accessible. Something that went from scary and threatening to something that was almost to the point of being corny.

A comedy scene can't really have two weirdoes in it. It doesn't make any sense that way, so you need someone to ground it and call out what's unusual about this person and this scene. Early on, I got pretty good at doing that, and I felt pretty comfortable doing that.

When they first start doing comedy, new comics or even people that have only been doing it three or four years, they're doing an impersonation of a stand-up. This is what I think a stand-up should sound like.

I once did a flip-flop joke in San Diego, and I got booed... but it's all in good fun.

A lot of the time, a comedy script is just dialogue, and that's the main thing you have to worry about.

Comedians who aren't screenwriters are telling jokes that they themselves think are funny. They're expressing their own view of what they think funny is.