A Quote by Alain de Botton

Being funny should be an incidental byproduct of trying to get to something truthful, not a destination in itself.

Alain de Botton

Quote Topics

Being Being Funny Destination Funny Get Itself Should Something Truthful Trying

Quote Author

Alain de Botton
English - Writer
Born: December 20, 1969

I'm interested in food and sharing my passion with a community of like-minded people. All of the celebrity stuff that comes along with that is just an incidental byproduct of being able to do what I love for a living.

Alex Guarnaschelli

I actually do bits of my writing in sort of incidental spaces - when I'm traveling on the Tube or on a bus. More often than not, it's a reaction to how you feel about something, and if you're sitting down and concentrating on, 'I must write something,' then you can't have a truthful reaction.

Johnny Flynn

In order for comedy to be funny you have to play the truth of the moment. But if you're not being completely truthful to the basis of the character, its not going to be funny.

Stephen Root

The bottom line of comedy is to be funny, and the bottom line of drama is to be truthful. You can be truthful and funny, but if you're not truthful in a drama than the audience leaves you.

Eddie Izzard

I consider myself very lucky. God has a funny way of bringing some things around and knocking you in the head with the ultimate destination. Something I should have achieved quite easily took me a long time to get around to. It came in His time, not mine.

Jim Morris

I guess in my house when I was growing up, I was comfortable trying to be funny. And my dad, of course, it bugged him sometimes. He was trying to rest, and I was constantly trying to say something stupid to get a reaction. But I like doing these movies. You can do it in front of the camera and then it's over. I don't have to worry about being in front of too many people.

Adam Sandler

Comedy isn't really something where you get discovered. You can't network your way to being funny or talented. It's not hard to get seen if you're funny. If you're funny, talented, and work hard, you will go somewhere.

Amy Schumer

One second here and there will make all the difference between something being funny and not being funny. That's why I like going, 'Well, we wrote that six months ago, and it was funny one time we read it, but it's not funny anymore. So what? Just dump it.'

Jonathan Krisel

A poet or a comedian can say what's on the mind of people. They should be funny. They should make you laugh. It may be so truthful that it hurts, but it makes you laugh.

Russell Simmons

Style to me is incidental. The British are very adept at creating it for its own sake, but the best style is incidental. John Coltrane had a style but it was totally incidental to what he was.

Tom Verlaine

There is no merit in being truthful when one is truthful by nature, or rather when one can be nothing else; it is a gift, like poetry or music. But it needs courage to be truthful after carefully considering the matter, unless a kind of pride is involved; for example, the man who says to himself, "I am ugly," and then says, "I am ugly" to his friends, lest they should think themselves the first to make the discovery.

Eugene Delacroix

I do think there are some actors that can get away with trying to be funny, and they're still funny because they're just likeable, and you want to see them. Me, though, when you see me trying to be funny, it's like the worst thing in the world. It's needy, it's cloying, it's manipulative - it's bad.

Constance Wu

Football was always a deal we made with ourselves. We adopted it for its brutality, which was embedded in a context that happened to be perfectly suited to television and to gambling, but which we could convince ourselves was only incidental to our enjoyment because it was only incidental to the game itself.

Charlie Pierce

Success isn't about reaching your goals; it's about striving for things, like the joy of trying to raise a family, trying to be a successful singer, trying to write good songs, trying to be a better person. It's that old thing about life being about the journey, not the destination.