A sense of humor is good for you. Have you ever heard of a laughing hyena with heart burn?
We get the worrywart, the hypochondriac, the money-grubbing miser, the intractable negotiator... Some would say certain of these refer to the stereotypical, or 'stage' Jew. But objectively speaking, the only crime in humor is an unfunny joke.
When I was young, my favorite picture book was 'Fletcher and Zenobia,' written by Edward Gorey and illustrated by Victoria Chess. It's long out of print now, but its mix of macabre humor and 1960s psychedelia made it a perfect children's book for the times.
I like working on stories where I can explore the darker corners of childhood without illustrations but with humor.
It's amazing how these little guys can say things that a mortal human could never get away with. There's some sort of unspoken license... when outlandish things come out of an inanimate object, somehow it equals humor.
There's some sort of unspoken license... when outlandish things come out of an inanimate object, somehow it equals humor.
The great thing about university is that they incline you to get up and do it, from the Classics to modern plays, to the humor that Monty Pythons made popular.
Incongruity, they say, is one of the main ingredients of humor. Maybe it's because everybody can feel superior to me. I honestly don't know.
One question about a joke is, how well is the strangeness of the situation resolved? At 'The New Yorker', we retain a lot of incongruity, tapping the playful part of the mind - Monty Python-type stuff. We also try to use humor as a vehicle for communicating ideas. Not editorial comment, but observation.
Academics tend to have wonderfully infantile senses of humor.
'The Sopranos' is filled with really retrograde humor. Bathroom humor, falls, stupid puns, bad jokes - infantile, adolescent stuff, but it makes me laugh.
Humor is a way of saying we're all seeing the same ridiculous, absurd, infuriating things together.
If you don't infuse humor into a subject matter, no matter how dark, the audience can't accept the message of a film. It closes them down. Humor can open them up.
I think hip-hop does a very good job of infusing comedy and humor and wit into music, a lot more than other genres.
If this humor be the safety of our race, then it is due largely to the infusion into the American people of the Irish brain.
When I did 'Sex and the City,' it was like, 'Let's do a comedy where the humor is not coming from innuendo but from the a truthful place. This is a show where we're going to be able to say and do what we want.'
As far as humor goes, I've always been a very insecure person and I've always wanted to be liked.
Professional comedians, surprisingly, have a lack of humor. They're insensitive to the insanity of our times.
Humor has bailed me out of more tight situations than I can think of. If you go with your instincts and keep your humor, creativity follows. With luck, success comes, too.
I'm drawn to the unconventional because I've been drawn unconventionally. I believe that I'm supposed to topple over these false images of what's idealistically beautiful. Because, of course, these intangible qualities are very attractive to women. Sincerity. Sense of humor. Success.
