Humor Roots Quotes

My comedic instinct, is a little bit more rooted in - my mother's British so I've always been more of the dry receiver of the crazy as opposed to the initiator of the crazy. I'm kind of predisposed to be the straight man.

I think I knew I was funny in Elementary School. I think most funny people realize it when they're young. It tends to come out of stress or trauma - something that makes you want to be funny.

When people say, 'How did you start in comedy,' I say my family was kidnapped by ninjas when I was very young, and to get them released I had to do a killer five-minute set. And even after I did that, you know, I started doing comedy under tough circumstances, I still kept at it because I enjoyed it.

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.

As a kid, I loved Paula Poundstone and Richard Pryor. But my mother was a huge influence on my comedy.

Every joke has its origin - the punching people in the face joke. It hurts like hell to get punched in the face.

I never was obsessed with comedians. When I was a little, little boy, I'd watch, like, George Carlin on 'Dinah Shore.'

If you're watching comedy movies, go back and check out the Marx Brothers in 'Duck Soup,' or Buster Keaton in 'The General,' or Laurel and Hardy or W.C. Fields or whatever - and see what pure talent really was, so that you can see where it came from, and then you can sort of gauge it from there.

Of course, my whole theory of comedy is based in reality. The funniest stuff comes from real life.

I grew up watching Letterman, 'Seinfeld,' 'SNL,' and Monty Python movies. But nothing made me want to get into comedy more than when 'Mr. Show' started airing.

My mother was very funny. My dad had a great sense of humor. My grandmother, too.

A lot of people have gotten into comedy because of certain influences in their lives or events that were painful, and I really have wracked my brain to figure it out. I pretty much have had a normal childhood. Maybe it was too normal.

The radio was my big influence. Comedy came from the instinctual feel I had for language.

I'm a huge fan of 'The Odd Couple,' yes, and any comparisons to Tony Randall and or Jack Lemmon are completely welcome. I kind of try to channel those guys, and then add my own neuroses, too.

The only reason I wanted to do 'MADtv' was because I grew up reading 'Mad Magazine' because I'm a comic-book nerd.

I think growing up in Indiana prepares anyone for a life in comedy. I do feel like there is a certain kind of self-effacing cynicism among all Hoosiers.

I don't have that kind of Southern experience, of the fire-and-brimstone preacher type of thing. Certainly not in my comedy. I come more from the guilt-ridden, neurotic type of [ - ] I have more in common with the Jewish brand of comedy.

I don't know the statistics, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that a disproportionate number of comics come from broken homes.