Comedy and Tragedy Quotes

The more serious the situation, the funnier the comedy can be. The greatest comedy plays against the greatest tragedy. Comedy is a red rubber ball and if you throw it against a soft, funny wall, it will not come back. But if you throw it against the hard wall of ultimate reality, it will bounce back and be very lively. Very, very few people understand this.

And regardless of the fact that in this country, certainly in the arts, we treat comedy as a second-class citizen, I've never thought of it that way. I've always thought it to be important. The last time I looked, the Greeks were holding up two masks. I've always thought of it not only as having equal value, but as the craft of it, being funny.

Sin and grace, absence and presence, tragedy and comedy, they divide the world between them and where they meet head on, the Gospel happens.

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.

I get bored with the constant probing for the cliched tears of the clown, the dark side of the comic.

If you have no tragedy, you have no comedy. Crying and laughing are the same emotion. If you laugh too hard, you cry. And vice versa.

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 humor can be made to alternate with melancholy, one has a success, but when the same things are funny and melancholic at the same time, it's just wonderful.

But I find with Francis Bacon, some of the things were in the place, and someone who was connected with these schools of thought, and someone who had a motivation that equals the scope of the comedy and the tragedy in the plays.

I've discovered that like every writer, I'm helpless MYSELF - and that means I find myself unconsciously or semi-consciously repeating motifs and themes and even using certain words or images recurrently in my work, no matter how much I think I'm starting fresh. But I've always admired artists who made a specific sport of trying to visit different kinds of genres or mediums or modes - not just 'western' or 'detective', but comedy/tragedy, epic and miniature, traditional/experimental.

'Parental Guidance' combines comedy and pathos in the best way.

I think we're all good and bad, but good's not funny. Bad is funny. Suppress the good and let the bad out, and then you can be funny.

I suppose I walk that line between comedy and cruelty because I think one illuminates the other. We're all cruel, aren't we? We are all extreme in one way or another at times and that's what drama, since the Greeks, has dealt with.

I'm a tearless clown. If I were to get a tattoo, it would be the two masks, and they would be both smiling.

Sometimes, I think the best kind of poem is one in which there is an acute balance between what is humorous and that which is very serious. That balance is very hard to strike. But it can be done.

I think Britain has this tradition which suggests that if you make the readers laugh too much, you can't really be serious. Whereas, I think one of the functions laughter can perform in a book, as in life, is that it's a reaction to genuine horror.

You will not leave the theater with nothing to talk about. For me, comedy and tragedy when you get them both in one evening, that's the most satisfying.

In college, I learned that my favorite parts were the sad clown parts. Those are the ones I love because you get to do everything. You get to be funny, make them laugh one minute, and make them cry the next minute.

Every movie I've ever made says the same thing. They all find comedy in people trying to live their lives without any rules.

Since it's based on my parents, it's more emotionally close to me than some of my more surreal plays. And then I like the balance of the comic and the sad. It should play as funny, but you should care about the characters and feel sad for them.

The things that I gravitate toward in film and TV are things that make me laugh but then break my heart.

I find life a mix of humor and pathos, and all my books reflect that to one degree or another.

Whenever you find humour, you find pathos close by its side.

Generally speaking, cancer - not that funny of a thing. When you hear about it, you don't go, 'Oh, hilarious!'... But within that - comedy, tragedy, hand-in-hand.

I was very moved by shows that combined things that were funny and sad. I remember liking 'Simpsons' episodes in which emotions were central.