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It's easier not to make a particular joke in case it offends. But every joke will offend someone, and I've always believed that the audience is bigger than one person. The danger is that things will become bland.

Especially when you deal with comedy, you have got to be really honest because it's the honesty and the spontaneity that causes people to chuckle, that catches people.

It seems to me that humour is everybody's way of keeping sane and standing off from the situations so that they can see it intellectually, as well as emotionally, and I don't know whether you've noticed, but if somebody tells a joke, it's nearly always a mini fantasy.

There's something very authentic about humor, when you think about it. Anybody can pretend to be serious. But you can't pretend to be funny.

Sure, the comedians who swear or use scatological humor can get laughs, but they're uncomfortable laughs.

In a way, a lot of my humor comes from presenting things that are dramatic or shocking and then people not having socially appropriate responses, having people denying the drama by failing to react to it, and that's a really classic form of humor.

Sometimes an actor will stumble on the joke, and I'm right on them. Back it up before the audience hears the bad version of the joke, because humor is 90% surprise. If they know what's coming, they won't laugh as hard.

People complain that joking about serious subjects is 'making light' of them. Isn't that a good idea? Comedy lets the air out of the bully's tires.

I think humor is such a personal thing, and you put a microphone in somebody's face, they're going to say something that offends somebody.

I've experienced plenty of times when something I think is funny doesn't do very well. And there are times when something I don't think is funny makes the audience laugh so hard.