A Quote by Elaine Stritch

You can't be funny unless you're tragic, and you can't be tragic unless you're funny.

Elaine Stritch

Quote Topics

Funny Tragic Unless

Quote Author

Elaine Stritch
American - Actress
February 2, 1925 - July 17, 2014

I don't really find things funny unless they're deeply tragic at the same time. I think if you're funny just for the sake of being funny, it's just frivolous nonsense. To me, all the best comic plays have been written about really serious and rather bleak things.

Lee Hall

The thing I try to get across to the writers - and I do a lot of writing, too - is that when I do stand-up, nothing I talk about is funny. Everything is really sad and tragic and then I make it funny.

Chris Rock

People often think that you have a sense of humor because you think that life is funny. Life isn't funny at all. It's appalling and tragic.

Howard Jacobson

As a rule people don't think other people on drugs are funny. They think they are tragic. They have a point, but I still had the funny.

Natasha Lyonne

Optimism isn't funny unless you are laughing at the person, whereas extreme pessimism is extremely funny. It's exaggeration.

Steve Toltz

Life would be tragic if it weren't funny.

Stephen Hawking

Optimism isnt funny unless you are laughing at the person, whereas extreme pessimism is extremely funny. Its exaggeration.

Steve Toltz

Music can be witty, but it's not funny unless it's conceptually funny.

Alan Menken

Habits are funny things. What's funny, or rather tragic, is that bad habits are so predictable and avoidable. Despite this, there are people by the millions who insist on acquiring habits that are bad, expensive, and create problems. The habit they weren't going to get, got them!

Zig Ziglar

One cannot balance tragedy in the scales Unless one weighs it with the tragic heart.

Stephen Vincent Benet

There's nothing tragic about being fifty. Not unless you're trying to be twenty-five.

William Holden

Sometimes in the most tragic situation, something just profoundly funny happens.

David Hyde Pierce

The problem is that we live in an uptight country. Why don't we just laugh at ourselves? We are funny. Gays are funny. Straights are funny. Women are funny. Men are funny. We are all funny, and we all do funny things. Let's laugh about it.

Bob Newhart

People want me to be funny all the time. They think I'm being funny no matter what I say or do and that's not the case. I rarely joke unless I'm in front of a camera. It's not what I am in real life. It's what I do for a living.

Christopher Guest

Whereas the comic confronts simply logical contradictions, the tragic confronts a moral predicament. Not minor matters of true andfalse but crucial questions of right and wrong, good and evil face the tragic character in a tragic situation.