A Quote by Jesse Kellerman

Tragedy without comedy is melodrama, and comedy without a higher purpose is vacant.

Jesse Kellerman

Quote Topics

Comedy Higher Higher Purpose Melodrama Purpose Tragedy Vacant Without

Quote Author

Jesse Kellerman
American - Novelist
Born: September 1, 1978

There's comedy in tragedy, and tragedy in comedy. There's always light and dark in most jobs. Whether it's framed as a comedy, drama or tragedy, you try to mix it up within that. You can work on a comedy and it's not laugh-a-minute off set. You can work on a tragedy that's absolutely hilarious.

Harry Treadaway

I naturally think in terms of comedy whenever I see anything because tragedy is so close to comedy, so I like to add the tragedy to the comedy or a little bit of comedy to the tragedy in order to make them both feel more real to me.

Amy Hill

Well, for me, it's the relationship between comedy and life - that's the edge I live on, and maybe it's my protection against looking at the tragedy of it all. It's seeing life in balance. Comedy and tragedy co-exist. You can't have one without the other. I'm of the school that anything can be funny, if seen from a comedic point of view.

Harold Ramis

I have always felt comedy and tragedy are roommates. If you look up comedy and tragedy, you will find a very old picture of two masks. One mask is tragedy. It looks like its crying. The other mask is comedy. It looks like its laughing. Nowadays, we would say, How tasteless and insensitive. A comedy mask is laughing at a tragedy mask.

Gilbert Gottfried

I have always felt comedy and tragedy are roommates. If you look up comedy and tragedy, you will find a very old picture of two masks. One mask is tragedy. It looks like it's crying. The other mask is comedy. It looks like it's laughing. Nowadays, we would say, 'How tasteless and insensitive. A comedy mask is laughing at a tragedy mask.'

Gilbert Gottfried

Comedy is an intellectual affair, and deals chiefly with logic. Tragedy is an emotional affair, and deals chiefly with value. Horace Walpole once said that "life is a comedy to the man who thinks and a tragedy to the man who feels." Comedy is negative; it is a criticism of limitations and an unwillingness to accept them. Tragedy is positive; it is an uncritical acceptance of the positive content of that which is delimited. Since comedy deals with the limitations of actual situations and tragedy with their positive content, comedy must ridicule and tragedy must endorse.

James Kern Feibleman

One can play comedy, two are required for melodrama, but a tragedy demands three.

Elbert Hubbard

Love in France is a comedy; in England a tragedy; in Italy an opera seria; and in Germany a melodrama.

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

I was considered a comedy magician. And - how do I put this without sounding egotistical? - it didn't take me long to realize that comedy magicians usually couldn't do comedy or magic.

Ricky Jay

It's an ongoing process, in the script, on the set and in the editing room, to make sure you are being true to the emotion of the film without turning it into a melodrama, and making sure you're getting all the laughs you can without it turning into just some stupid comedy.

Jon Turteltaub

Tragedy massages the human ego even as comedy deflates it. ... Tragedy pits us against large foes and the trip wire is our own character. ... In comedy we fall afoul of one another. Comedy depends on social life, on our behavior in groups. In tragedy you can observe one human against the gods. In comedy it's one human versus other humans and often one man (or woman if I'm writing it) against her own worst impulses.

Rita Mae Brown

Humour and high seriousness... Perfect bedfellows, I think. Though I usually phrase it in terms of comedy and darkness. Comedy without darkness rapidly becomes trivial. And darkness without comedy rapidly becomes unbearable.