Quote

Now the point of comedy is not just looking funny, it's use of language. We have at our disposal a great language... and the imaginative, creative use of that language can be at the service of humour.

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.

Comedy is to force us to observe ourselves in ways that are humorous and yet, at the end of the day, that cause us enough discomfort with the status quo to make a change.

I think comedians have a function in society, which is to make fun of our icons.

I think there's nothing better than laughing in life, so that's nice, to be thought of as someone who can make someone laugh. It's 'cause I think life is hard. You know, my dad was a really silly man. A great Irish silly man. And that's fine.

Probably spending 12 years at boarding school - comedy became a survival gene. But I think some people are funny right off the bat, as soon as they can speak or be naughty.

Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs.

And regardless of the fact that in this country, certainly in the arts, we treat comedy as a second-class citizen, I've never thought of it that way. I've always thought it to be important. The last time I looked, the Greeks were holding up two masks. I've always thought of it not only as having equal value, but as the craft of it, being funny.

Your funny gets developed pretty early on. Comedy requires that you understand as much as possible about the viewpoints of all people and everything that's going on around you. It genuinely requires a true point of view, a real sense of your own view of things in the world.

Whether it's an innate ability or an acquired way of regarding the world around us, being labeled as funny can only be accepted as a compliment.