10 Buster Keaton Quotes on Humor

Buster Keaton quotes on humor

8. A comedian does funny things. A good comedian does things funny.

11. I gotta do some sad scenes. Why, I never tried to make anybody cry in my life! And I go 'round all the time dolled up in kippie clothes-wear everything but a corset! Can't stub my toe in this picture nor anything! Just imagine having to play-act all the time without ever getting hit with anything!

12. I said, 'how am I gonna keep from flinching?' He said, 'Look away from me. When I say turn, it'll be there.' He put my head where my feet were!

17. The moment you give me a locomotive and things like that to play with, as a rule I find some way of getting laughs with it.

18. Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot.

19. He was by his whole style and nature so much the most deeply 'silent' of the silent comedians that even a smile was as deafeningly out of key as a yell. In a way his pictures are like a transcendent juggling act in which it seems that the whole universe is in exquisite flying motion and the one point of repose is the juggler's effortless, uninterested face.

21. Perhaps because 'dry' comedy is so much more rare and odd than 'dry' wit, there are people that never much cared for Keaton. Those who do cannot care mildly.

27. Watch his beautiful, compact body as it pirouettes or pretzels in tortured permutations or, even more elegantly, stands in repose as everything goes crazy around it. Watch his mind as it contemplates a hostile universe whose violent whims Buster understands, withstands and, miraculously, tames. Watch his camera taking his picture (Keaton directed or supervised all his best films); it is as cool as the star it captured in its glass... The medium was still in its infancy; comics were pioneering the craft of making people laugh at moving images. Keaton, it turns out, knew it all - intuitively.

30. He was doing stuff that was surreal.

33. Maybe the trouble is that modern comics strive too hard to be sophisticated and knowing. What we've lost over the years is innocence and, as Keaton and company prove, innocence is an integral part of comedy.