Comedy deflates the sense precisely so that the underlying lubricity and malice may bubble to the surface.

We mustn't complain too much of being comedians, it's an honorable profession. If only we could be good ones the world might gain at least a sense of style. We have failed, that's all. We are bad comedians, we aren't bad men.

The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and a protection from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little for him.

And I did laugh sans intermission an hour by his dial. O noble fool, a worthy fool, motley's the only wear.

Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.

A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

Though it make the unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve.

I think being funny is not anyone's first choice.

Comedy naturally wears itself out -- destroys the very food on which it lives; and by constantly and successfully exposing the follies and weaknesses of mankind to ridicule, in the end leaves itself nothing worth laughing at.