Top 50 Gags Quotes & Sayings

Wallace and Gromit's contraptions are created purely for gags, but we all have the urge to invent - especially children. If they're bored, kids will make something from cardboard boxes, yoghurt pots, tape and elastic bands. Often, those constructions are the best.

I started pulling gags on Al [Pachino]. That was the moment I realized that he was absolutely out of his mind. I mean that he's certifiably insane. I wouldn't spend a night in a room where he's at.

I love sight gags and broad stuff, but you can get to such a subtle degree, especially with CG animation.

I don't think our records contain obvious humour. We're not cracking gags.

You have to take the horror seriously but there's gags aplenty. Most people, when they do horror it's just grim.

A lot of those comics can't hold down relationships and they've got no other life apart from performing. They sleep in their Jags and a lot of them can't even talk. All they can do is tell gags.

You are in a strange world in pantomime, where you are allowed to step out and talk to the audience and do silly gags. Sometimes I feel like a cartoon character.

Everyone told me that British sitcom was dead. Then I looked at 'Seinfeld' and 'Frasier' and thought, 'No it's not, it just needs more gags.'

I have often said in answer to inquiries as to how I got away with kidding some of our public men, that it was because I liked all of them personally, and that if there was no malice in your heart there could be none in your "Gags", and I have always said I never met a man I dident like.

I do not have a good control of running sight gags. I laugh like hell when I see them, but I don't know how to invent those jokes.

I don't think it's aiming at gags, I think the humour is woven into it. It's part of how the characters operate and how they deal with disaster because they're worldly enough to have a bit of irony and wryness about their own circumstances. So, I think the humour comes out of that.

They say Ant and Dec are a double act, but they are just presenters. They read off an Autocue and they don't do gags, so that doesn't count.

Television is like a great monster, eating your gags as fast as you say them.

I prefer situational or character-based humor to gross-out gags and comedic set pieces.

I find it hilarious that there are academics who try to analyse chemical changes in the brains of students while exposing them to gags.

I failed to get into drama school, and my best friend told me I should do stand-up instead. I was always doing gags and voices, so he booked a gig for me without telling me. I only had four days to write it. I did a seven-minute set; the first four minutes were terrible, but the last two were amazing.

'The Muppets' is really about innocence and charm and sweetness and light and having hope - and stupid gags.

The two great things about computer CG stuff are I can now do gags I would never have dreamed of in the old day.

It [death] chokes you, gags you, but you have to pretend that you're doing just fine, not trembling with this fear because the end is close.

Personally, I think the silent films were more effective for L&H, but the sound was of great value in enhancing the effects - dialog eliminated a lot of action & sight gags - I always feel that 'action' speaks louder than words.

Gags die, humor doesn't.

I'd feel guilty just doing gags.

If you're doing gags, I think it's important to have characters who are as strong-willed and impactful as possible.

Everyone talks about the gags, but the most difficult thing is coming up with the stories. You have to learn to do that for sitcoms.

If you do something that is not gags and punchlines and is character-based, where there are no jokes as such, then it all has to come from a place of truth, and I love that - I love nothing more than getting very serious about my comedy.

We became very good in developing comical sight gags when we made 'The Flintstones.'

Anyone can do shock value. Develop enough tension and cue the music right, then have something jump out: It's almost impossible not to jump in your seat. But that doesn't leave any effect on you when you leave the movie theater. To me, the best horror is psychological horror. The Exorcist, The Shining, The Omen, things that kind of stick with you long after you've seen them. It's what you don't see. It's letting the audience think a little bit, not spelling it out for them. Giving them credit for using their own imaginations rather than sticking in gags and tricks.

One of the challenges with series TV is not to give everyone all the punchlines, all the gags and all the fun stuff at the top. Everyone is so anxious, for very good reasons, to hit the ground running, but I've been on the other end of that.

The fascinating thing about the studio was that there was no story department. They would put a little notice up on the bulletin board saying: 'The next Oswald will take place at the North Pole. Anybody having any gags, please turn them in before such a date.' If you turned in gags regularly, the way Tex Avery, Cal Howard, Jack Carr and two or three others of us did, you'd be called into the gag meeting. The group would go into Walt's office and talk about whatever the subject of the cartoon was. Walt would put it into some kind of form and that was the story--no scripts, no storyboards.

We did have a script, but it didn't consist of the routines and gags. It outlined the basic story idea and just a plan for us to follow. But when it came to each scene, we and the gagmen would work out ideas.

My works were not - and they still aren't - single panel gags with a punch line underneath them. I like a lot of those cartoons; I just don't draw them.

We then took a shortened version of what we'd been doing in the pubs, with the best gags and things like that, out to cabaret clubs and things in the north of England for six weeks. And we became a big success.

If you can mix glamor and gags, then you can catch the audience twice over.

My comedy comes from the actual music itself - they're observational musical gags. I could take the music away and it would just be some words.

Letters to absence can a voice impart, And lend a tongue when distance gags the heart.

I'd rather try and cram in another two gags than leave a pause to say, 'Hey, wasn't that bit funny?'

Rehearsals are for gags.

Comedy is all about the character. When you're too focused on the gags, the character suffers, and you don't get the laugh. Comedy has to come from the character.

I think each film I do has less and less dialogue. It really helps a lot for foreign sales, because when I go to Europe, there's very little problem with communication. All the gags are visual. The music they can understand, and it helps communicate a lot better.

Some people are brilliant at being comedy actors and if you're a comedian I think there's a perception that, if you're acting at something that's meant to be funny, it will be funny all the way though and you'll be dropping in gags.

I don't really like jokes in a way. I mean gags are fine but I like weird moments where what you have isn't really a joke, just tiny moments.

Sight gags had to be planned; they required timing and mechanics. Occasionally, spontaneity would arise in the shooting of the scenes.

There is a relationship between humor and fear. Think of all the gags you ever heard that have to do with dismemberment, or something that's horrible in one way or another, even if it's just horrible in the sense that somebody's being embarrassed. What do kids laugh at? Kids laugh if your fly's down. That's hilarious. But for the kid whose fly is down, it's a horrible situation.

Animation is about timing; movement or lack of movement, often in time with music. These are the tools which make it's visual gags work, or not. Again, comics don't have those tools, so you have to find some sort of parallel to create something that suggests a close approximation of the source material, but without the ability to truly replicate it.

Over the past 50 years Bob Hope employed 88 joke writers who supplied him with more than one million gags, and he still couldn't make me laugh.

I love visual gags and gimmicks; I love them.

I'm never happier when writing than when I see gags taking shape - ideally, gags at my own expense. What I like is the shuttling back and forth, serious into comedy and vice-versa, ideally, both in the same sentence, or even simultaneously. The best jokes are always ideas in miniature.

What I love about 'Modern Family' is that it makes you laugh, and there's hilarious physical gags that are outrageous, but there's real heart to it, and you feel good after you watch it.

He wasn't Bugs without the gags we gave him.

If you start to disrespect the character you're playing, or play it too much for laughs, that can work for a sketch, it will sell some gags, but it's all technique. It's like watching a juggler - you can be impressed by it, but it's not going to touch you in any way.