Comedy Limits Quotes

Larry David finds a way to make jokes about the Holocaust. It would never have occurred to me. And it was funny.

It was great to be the rock comic, the shock comic. But after you've played Giants Stadium with Bon Jovi in front of 82,000 people, after you've done the 'Wild Thing' video with Jessica Hahn and every rock band from hell, you're not gonna top that.

For me, in my mind personally and privately, there are no limits to comedy.

I didn't think that anything is beyond humor - not profane humor, but a good, honest approach to humor.

I don't care if my jokes are appropriate for a kid.

I know it's the comedian's instinct to say, "Do it, man, nothing's off-limits! It's cool, bro!" I don't know if that's the answer for me. "Do I really want to make a joke about a miscarriage when a woman in the audience might have had one?" I don't worship comedy; at the end of the day I don't fall to the altar of comedy unquestioningly.

I've told Michael Jackson jokes. If you got really technical, you could say those are jokes about child molestation. You could, if you got technical. A lot of this is just selective outrage because honestly, the audience are the ones that tell us that something shouldn't be spoken. The audience lets us know. And I've never, in my almost 30 years of being a comedian, seen a comedian continue to tell a joke that the audience doesn't respond to. I've never seen it.

There's no such thing as too far. If it works it's funny, if it doesn't work it's too far, it's stupid. Really there's no such thing as "too far." You're joining the politically correct when you use words like "too far." You don't want to join the army of politically correct.

I'm looking for laughs, you know? If it take me to flip over a table, if I have to go physical comedy, I will do it. But whatever the joke needs at that particular time, is where I'm dedicated to. I'm not into beating somebody down and beating myself up. I don't do insults and things like that. I don't do it - I'm a storyteller.

When you look at someone like Sacha Baron Cohen, you have to really respect the boundaries he is pushing as Bruno or Borat.

Are they real fires? Or are people just reacting to something? Just because there’s an alarm going doesn’t mean it’s a fire. And I think that people are confusing the two. It’s only a fire when it offends the fans, and the fans turn on you. Tosh has fans, and they get the joke. If you’ve watched enough Tracy Morgan, you let the worst thing go by. When did Tracy Morgan become Walter Cronkite? You have to mean something to me to offend me. You can’t break up with me if we don’t date.

Here's what I'm afraid of. I know a lot of comedians, friends of mine, who just got into the 'Doesn't matter what I say. It doesn't matter. They're just gonna laugh anyway.'

I'm not big on fat jokes. That's a little beneath me. I'm not a huge fan of making a joke - and as I say this, I'm sure I do it - completely at someone else's expense.

I know the fashion is that everything is fair game [for comedy material] but I don't believe that.

It's funny... you can make fun of AIDS or Haiti, but if you make fun of some starlet in Hollywood's looks? That's like the one thing... the line you are not to cross.

I don't feel those limits when I'm on stage. For some reason, audiences let me get away with things. Remember, it's all comedy. Words. Thoughts. All thoughts are safe and worth exploring.

You can make fun with Saddam Hussein jokes ... but you can't make fun of, say, the concentration camps. I think my target was not so much evil, but benign stupidity people doing stupid things without realising or, instead, thinking they were doing good.

I find it incredibly boring when people are mean about some individuals, especially if the individual has no power. I can understand how someone deems it necessary if somebody is in power to tear them down - I think that's really crucial. I make a lot of mean jokes about myself; as a theme, suffering seems to me a very interesting thing for comedy, but not the suffering of a particular individual.

Who's to say where funny stops and 'too far' starts?

To me, racist jokes are not funny. I am politically correct, in a weird way. I like to push the boundaries that are politically correct.

Audiences have proved time and again that they don't want a steady diet of any entertainer airing his social views - especially if he's a comedian.

Everything is so weird in politics that it's very hard to be funny about it, I think.

Hopefully the only things off-limits are crummy jokes, but being a standup comedian, I know that's not always the case... You know it when you have to take a shower afterward.

I can't not find humor in elements of most parts of life, but at the same time nothing ever seems perpetually funny to me.

If all you have is satire, your show will close. Even if all you have is comedy, your show will close. The hardest thing is not making people laugh: the hardest thing is building an emotional story. Any child can make a group of adults laugh.