Sketch Comedy Quotes

At first, there was a separation of clubs and sketch comedy. Now there's all kinds of comedy, making us one big happy family. ~ Jen Kirkman

I want to see Bob Dylan do sketch comedy. I'm a huge Bob Dylan fan. ~ Bradley Whitford

To go from working with a group of people in a sketch-comedy show on a small network, where it was all about just creating funny stuff, to being on a network show, and the pressures of that, and getting to know the new people who were involved in it. There was a learning curve for me. But it was an education. ~ Ken Marino

Dealing with sketch comedy and buddy teams like Abbott and Costello, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby - I just loved buddy comedies. ~ Drake Bell

Well, I loved variety in television, I loved sketch comedy. At 'Saturday Night Live,' I stayed almost seven years. ~ Dana Carvey

There's a common misconception with sketch comedy that you just go up there and wing it, but it's written, and there really is order. ~ Adam Pally

I think people were not expecting us [with Robert Ben Garant] to, they were just like, "Well here come the writers," but we both were coming out of a sketch comedy background, so when we pitch a movie, we play every character in the film. You act it out, you perform it - you do a 10-minute performance of the movie. ~ Thomas Lennon

I worked with the Groundlings, doing sketch comedy and improv at a theater here in L.A. It was my hobby, but I took classes and stayed passionate about it because it's what I wanted to do. It just fit. It takes a while before you can actually make money at it. I worked for years. ~ Fortune Feimster

People kept passing our [ with Robert Ben Garant] script around, and suddenly we had this reputation as screenwriters, which we're not - we're sketch comedy guys. ~ Thomas Lennon

A couple of friends and I started a sketch comedy group when we were teenagers, just for fun and to start creating stuff. It was a blast. ~ Reece Thompson

I think I'm one of those guys who was sort of always in comedy. I thought of myself - and other people seemed to think of me - as funny from a very young age. I was a very young comedy nerd and I even did sketch comedy in high school and college. I wrote and shot sketches on video and acted in them. ~ Andy Daly

One of the wonderful things about Portlandia - and I'm not just blowing smoke, although I can blow smoke, but I'm not - is that there is an expansive feeling to each segment. It's not reductive. It doesn't seem like sketch comedy. ~ Scott Raab

I don't have any type of sketch-comedy or stand-up background. ~ Jenna Fischer

That's what I love about sketch comedy: a sketch is five minutes, then it goes dark, and there's the potential for something else. ~ Jason Sudeikis

Everybody needs some good sketch comedy. ~ Bob Odenkirk

You really have no idea whether or not what you're writing is funny. In stand-up and sketch comedy, you know right away and you can make your changes accordingly. ~ Michael Showalter

I've just written this six-part sketch comedy series, which I've never done before. And I don't know how to pitch it. Am I supposed to just pick up a camera and put stuff on YouTube? Is that how it works? ~ David Alpay

My younger sister's a comedian. She has a sketch comedy group in Chicago called Schadenfreude and I look at her with such admiration and envy because it's such an amazing thing to make someone laugh. ~ Brian D'Arcy James

I'm a really gifted physical comedienne. I write and produce a lot of sketch comedy. ~ Jenn Lyon

My experience is at The Groundlings Theater, where we created different characters and did sketch comedy. And sometimes the characters were outrageous, but they always came from a real place. So even working there, we had to create characters from the people that we knew. ~ Cheryl Hines

There was a male sketch group in my college. I was like why isn't there a female sketch group? So then I started doing sketch comedy and all that stuff. It just happened. ~ Missi Pyle

I've always been a big fan of comedy and sketch comedy, and I like to laugh, but you can't just be funny. You do have to work at it, and you have to try to know what your role is and when you can insert humor, or when it's best not to. ~ Colin Hanks

I had seen some shows at the Groundlings [legendary L.A. improvisational and sketch comedy troupe] and thought, "If I could ever do that, that would really mean something, that I have arrived." So I went through the program and said to myself, "I'm going to stay here until they kick me out." Seriously, they can ask you to leave at any point. Luckily, they never did that to me. ~ Wendi McLendon-Covey

I've done some version of that Minnesota accent - that Midwestern accent - in sketch comedy for years. It's the quickest way to symbolize you're a mom. ~ Allison Tolman

I did sketch comedy, but I never did improv. So I've just tried to learn as I go. ~ John Oliver

My thing was always more character-driven comedies, not sketch comedy - not that there's not room for both or one isn't enjoyable, just my personal taste, I like movies that comedy comes from out of flaws of people, things that are uncomfortable, out of tragedy. ~ Vince Vaughn

If you want good sketches, go pick up Sid Caesar. The best of Your Show of Shows. That's the greatest sketch comedy you'll ever see on television. ~ Jamie Farr

Because it's uncensored cable, I think we'll be able to do the kind of sketch comedy that really hasn't been seen before. We can actually finish jokes. ~ Aries Spears

In sketch comedy, wear your character like a hat, not a suit of armor. ~ Andy Daly

I did sketch comedy with a troupe at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. ~ Selenis Leyva

Here in Hollywood you can actually get a marriage license printed on an Etch-A-Sketch. ~ Dennis Miller

I got a degree in broadcast journalism at Northwestern but was running a sketch-comedy group and then went to Second City. When the writers' strike happened in 2007-2008, I went to work at E! because I had that background. ~ Robin Thede

Many of the people I've worked with over the years came from a sketch-comedy background or an improv background, and I've learned a lot from them. ~ Megan Mullally

You make my vagina all melty,
wait no!
You make my belly all melty. My vaginas hot! ~ Lola Stark

You're just playing a role, whether it's a drama or a comedy. I find it really fun to sort of play opposite Uma. ~ Luke Wilson

There are some things people see in toilets that they wish they hadn't. What Trevor Hawkins sees might even cost him his life. ~ Rob Johnson

I think that when you're doing a comedy and it makes you laugh, there's a certain ... like you can reject it, and it's okay. It's not promoting it or making it seem cool. I think that's when you get into hot water. ~ Michael Pena

If comedy is about surprises, about tension, there's a lot of tension and surprise there, in the fact that people are expecting this to be natural. ~ Bo Burnham

The one charm of the past is that it is the past. But women never know when the curtain has fallen. They always want a sixth act, and as soon as the interest of the play is entirely over, they propose to continue it. If they were allowed their own way, every comedy would have a tragic ending, and every tragedy would culminate in a farce. They are charmingly artificial, but they have no sense of art. ~ Oscar Wilde

I like comedy as a group sport. ~ Maya Rudolph

And okay, fine. If you have to kiss her, you have to kiss her. And believe me, I do not envy you. That's taking one for the team a little far. I mean, I think I'd rather endure the stabbing myself instead of having to kiss her. ~ Gena Showalter

Once you laugh at you own weaknesses, you can move forward. Comedy breaks down walls. It opens up people. If you're good, you can fill up those openings with something positive. Mabye ... combat some the ugliness in the world. ~ Goldie Hawn

The major caveat in all of comedy is that it's all instinctive. There's no true criteria. There is no right or wrong. Ultimately, often I'm surprised at what an audience will or will not laugh at. I have to stay very, very open to an audiences first exposure to that material and how they react to it. ~ Larry Charles

The comedy gods are smiling on me tonight, because for the longest time, I have said that president Bush must set a timetable for removing his head from his ass ... and, by god, last week they went in and looked for it. They didn't find it, so now we don't know where it is, but at least for once in my life, I get to see the words Bush, operation, and successful in the same sentence. ~ Bill Maher

I listen to a lot of podcasts, which are split down the middle between comedy and board game podcasts, and a couple of eclectic ones like 'The Dinner Party' from NPR, where they take an event that happened that week in history and give you a cocktail recipe inspired by it. ~ Rich Sommer

Author's Warning
If you're buying this book as a gift for your grandma or a kid, you should be aware that it contains cusswords as well as tasteful depictions of cannibalism and people in their forties having sex. Don't blame me. I told you. ~ Christopher Moore

I saw within Its depth how It conceives
All things in a single volume bound by Love
of which the universe is the scattered leaves. ~ Dante Alighieri

'Buncha Losers' comedy is one of those homegrown American art forms, up there with infomercials and Elvis-shaped soap carvings. No other civilization could have invented it. The French took a stab with Sartre's 'No Exit,' but then they had to ruin it with a lesson at the end. ~ Rob Sheffield

Comedy Born :) When Tragedy Happens :( ~ Navin M. Karmarkar

I was completely unqualified to get into Harvard. But then I went to my interview for Harvard, and the woman asked, 'Why do you want to go here?' And I took out all of my comedy writing samples that I had done. I couldn't have been more delusional in terms of what I thought they wanted in a candidate for college. ~ Mike Birbiglia

I never worry about people not taking my work seriously as a result of the humor. In the end, the comic's best trick is the illusion that comedy is effortless. That people imagine what he's doing is easy is an occupational hazard. ~ Richard Russo

Tatiana is a ridiculously curvy thing of dreams, with smooth succulent thighs, long strawberry blond cascading beneath a teal bandana, and a nympho sparkle in her eyes that says pick me, lick me, spank me, or I punish you. Raw innocence and mayhem at once. ~ Brett Tate

I like doing the comedic episodes because it's refreshing. I enjoy doing comedic things and physical comedy. It's fun. ~ Emily Deschanel

I like to think I'm not stupid often, tonight proves that when I am, I do it in a big way. ~ Lisa Renee Jones

Do it [stand-up comedy] because it feels like the right thing to do. Do it because you don't want to do anything else. There is something in you that does not want you to do anything else other than comedy. ~ Russell Peters

All we need is a meteorologist who has once been soaked to the skin without ill effect. No one can write knowingly of the weather who walks bent over on wet days. ~ E.B. White

I set out to do a horror film with 'Dog Soldiers,' and what I came out with at the end of the day was something that was more of a cult movie, more of a black comedy with some horror elements in it. It kind of went over the top. ~ Neil Marshall

I like horror; I like comedy; I like drama; I like action; I like female heroes. ~ Joss Whedon

Comedy keeps the heart sweet. ~ Mark Twain

There's no such thing as a limit on being the best. You can always go for more. That's what it means to be human. No... That's what it means to be me. - Claire Stanfield ~ Ryohgo Narita

Let's not call physical comedy falling down and pratfalls. All humor is physical, no matter how you dish it out. It's timing, like a dancer or an athlete would have. ~ Chevy Chase

Classical ornament here and there accentuated the contrast; caryatides and carved masks of comedy or tragedy looked ~ G.K. Chesterton

Anyone watching '30 Rock' always knew Tina Fey was playing a fictionalized version of herself, a workaholic comedy writer who also plays one on TV. She's the boss; Liz Lemon just works here. ~ Rob Sheffield

You can't tell me the success of Kevin Bacon isn't somehow tied to his name. You're not going out to see a Kevin Hot-Dog movie. ~ Jim Gaffigan

There are tragedies and there are comedies, aren't there? And they are often more the same than different, rather like men and women, if you ask me. A comedy depends on stopping the story at exactly the right moment. ~ Siri Hustvedt