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If you record the world honestly, there's no way people can stop being funny. A lot of fiction writing doesn't get that idea, as if to acknowledge it would trivialize the story or trivialize human nature, when in fact human nature is reduced and falsified if the comic aspects are not included.

With comedy, it's really hard to tell if something's working on the page - you really need the actors to bring it alive. The scariest part is if people will laugh or not.

With comedy, the jokes will come out, and people will see them coming. Changes in daily life or current events can change the consciousness of audiences and can make the show less funny or feel more stale.

I performed after 9/11 for relief workers down by Ground Zero. There were these men just coming back, and they were voraciously hungry. They were heroes, pulling rubble, and I was a new comic trying to go blue just so I could get some laughs.

The basic function of a comic is stand-up because it's so straightforward and simple. If the audience don't laugh, you didn't do your job. I've had some audiences where I didn't care if they laughed or not because they were either too drunk or stupid.

The next time I write a play - in order to get audience trust for a particular sort of tragic line, I'll try to bring the audience a good distance before that. Part of that is allowing comic moments to occur. I had been afraid of that - that once the audience started laughing in the play, they would never stop.

Only really good comedies and really good horror movies get a verbal response out of the audience. People will scream. People will laugh.

I try to make the majority of my audience laugh. That's my audience. They'll laugh at the dead terrorist.

Comedy is the slave of time. What seemed funny then is unlikely to seem funny now, just as what strikes us as funny now would not have seemed funny then.