Comedic Roots Quotes

I've been doing silly voices since I was a child.

I was always being called upon to be an honorary boy alongside my brothers. I don't think I'd be a comic now if it hadn't been for that.

Yeah, well I've always played comedy. My background is musical comedy theatre and that's really where my training is. As an actor, that's my training.

I've always felt that there's a Catskills comic who lives in my head and is constantly trying to get out. There's all these jokes that have been passed down from Jewish generation to Jewish generation, which I love but which I've always made fun of.

I think my entire career path was determined for me when I was 6 years old, watching reruns of 'I Love Lucy' on TV and thinking about making people laugh.

I like the idea of being out there regularly with an audience and with a funny gang of people. That's what I grew up with - doing television, doing shows every week.

I love the Zucker brothers' films - 'Airplane!,' 'Top Secret' and 'Police Squad!' - are my formative experiences.

I was born a comic.

I'd done light comedy. In some quarters, About Last Night... is a romantic comedy. So it wasn't like I'd been doing Sophie's Choice my entire career. But for whatever reason, nobody had really given me the room or the ability to be out and out funny. And Lorne [Michaels] and Mike [Myers] and Chris [Farley] and Dana [Carvey], that crop really helped me do that.

I was pretty much a child of 'Monty Python.' I grew up loving that type of humor and even structured a lot of humor in the same fashion.

When I was younger, I was emulating David Letterman. David Letterman would yell out of his office window with a megaphone, and the next thing I'm doing is standing on the roof of a parking garage with a megaphone.

What ignited the rocket that sent you up into the vast regions of comedy, and why? I would say, for me, that philosophical treatise about having black beginnings and wanting love to compensate for that, wanting audiences and wanting attention - I say, "Au contraire." Completely opposite. I want the continuation of my mother's incredible love and attention to me.

I can only write what makes me laugh, and what makes me laugh is the comedy I grew up on.

Always being the outsider, you... feel comfortable everywhere, but you don't really feel at home anywhere. I definitely draw comedy from that.

It takes a lot of time to write and put up a sketch show, but that's part of who I am. I don't think that ever goes away, that sensibility - especially coming from the Upright Citizens Brigade. That's just who I am.

I think we grew up thinking that the funniest things on TV were the old, serious movies. I always liked the Marx Brothers, but the thing that always made us laugh were movies like Zero Hour. That's what inspired us.

Even as a little child, I've always had that comedian kind of attitude.

It's starting to feel good, although I don't like feeling too good - that's not where my comedy comes from.

But it also became the experience, or was the experience, of the writers who were attracted to this kind of humor. They're all men or women who come from the same kind of experience in their own lives.

My portrayal of Fagin was all to do with my experience in comedy and revue.

I think people who do comedy tend to do it well, and to do it painfully and truthfully. So making the leap to drama is easier for them because everything they've done is from pain anyway.

My parents loved comedies, so we saw Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, the Ritz Brothers, and the Marx Brothers. I wanted to be one of them.

My parents are both super funny, and I always knew I wanted to be on 'SNL.' My mom and I would watch it a lot.

I'm a huge Bob Hope fan, up until about the late '50s. I've seen so many of his movies up until then, and they're a big influence on me and a big influence on Woody Allen, who is basically just ripping off Bob Hope for his first five or six movies.

[ Hosting Saturday Night Live ] paved the way for Parks And Rec and The Grinder, the Comedy Central Roast, and that whole side of my career.