Comedic Perspective Quotes

Madmen and fools see everything through the medium of humor.

At some point I stopped stand-up because I didn't have something to say on a nightly basis.

I love comedy, because I like making fun of things even though they are dramatic.

Comedy defends the commonplace; tragedy explodes it.

Dave Chappelle is one of my comedic inspirations. His perspective is crazy, and he's super sharp.

I would love to be a dad. There are plenty of comedians who have kids. But they're dads. Being a dad is so different from being a mom.

I am a product... I'm a comedian. I'm not curing cancer. In the end, I tell jokes. I make people laugh. I make sense out of ridiculous situations, but in the end, it's all about laughter. It's all about your cheek hurting, your stomach hurting.

Comedians usually are rooting for the underdog. I mean to take a shot at an underdog I think is really stupid and low and not funny.

Well, for me, it's the relationship between comedy and life - that's the edge I live on, and maybe it's my protection against looking at the tragedy of it all. It's seeing life in balance. Comedy and tragedy co-exist. You can't have one without the other. I'm of the school that anything can be funny, if seen from a comedic point of view.

When I approach villains, unless it's a drama, I'm a comedian, so I approach most things from a comedic point of view.

I'm really attracted to authors who take on really tricky material with a very open mind and take a subject matter that you wouldn't think would be a comedy.

I dare say that if most comedians today, the gifted ones, were to sit down and write, they'd learn more about their craft. But what happens is they get out there before they learn what their viewpoint is, if any.

My shows and my material are grounded in reality. It's pretty much something that's either happened in my life or in the news, and I start there and give you my take on it.

I think of myself as a comedian who has the pleasure of writing jokes about things that I actually care about, and that's really it. I have great respect for people who are in the front lines and the trenches of trying to enact social change, but I am far lazier than that.

I no longer believe that just about everything is funny, if viewed from the proper angle.

I love comedians that dive into politics. I personally don't feel comfortable, with my background, weighing in unless I have a take that I think is funny enough that I would put it in front of an audience.

For me and most of my friends who are comedians, if you've been doing comedy for a while, your tolerance for things actually moves. I find it very hard to be shocked, and when other people aggressively take offense to something, I'm sometimes confused.

I think being an outsider in general always helps you in comedy. I think it helps to have an outsider's eye. And so I have an outsider's voice. You know, as soon as I start talking, I don't belong here. And I think that helps in a way.

Lots of people say if you dredge too much stuff up, you'll go crazy - "You'll go insane!" But for a comedian, insanity is not a problem. It's a goal.

At the risk of appearing disingenuous, I don't really think of myself as 'writing humor.' I'm simply reporting on the world I observe, which is frequently hilarious.

I think of myself as a comedian who has the pleasure of writing jokes about things that I actually care about.

This is going to sound pretentious, but I like comedy that addresses something I find either worrisome or interesting in my life. I like Louis C.K.'s stuff or Bill Burr's stuff. I feel like there's comedy where someone will think of something that they think will work comedically, and then they reverse engineer that point of view so they can say that funny thing. The comedians I like, it could be an allusion, but it feels like their point of view comes first and then the jokes are a reflection of what they actually believe, or are frightened of, or are curious about, or are interested in.

You start realizing that maybe you're the one night a month that people have out, and they don't need to hear your political views or how dark you can get. They just want to laugh for an hour and go home. Once I wrapped my head around that, my act evolved accordingly.

A comedian is simply a different kind of therapist. A comedian is a psychologist and a psychiatrist rolled into one. Except I can't prescribe medicine. (You still need a doctorate, which is bullshit.) Okay, so I'm not like a psychiatrist. Fine. But I'm still like a psychologist (except I can't diagnose or treat mental illness).

I don't think comedy comes from hotbeds of doing shtick. I think it usually comes from some kind of childhood humiliation or darkness.