Sketch Quotations

Most sketch aficionados have an enormous amount of respect for 'Mr. Show.' I didn't have HBO back then, so I was always trying to find episodes. Bob Odenkirk and David Cross became celebrities, and Jay Johnston - who's lesser known, but brilliant - deserves a lot of credit, too.

My younger sister's a comedian. She has a sketch comedy group in Chicago called Schadenfreude and I look at her with such admiration and envy because it's such an amazing thing to make someone laugh.

The gummy bears tattoo was my idea. It's my son's favorite candy. The sketch was my other son's idea. It's a self-portrait of himself. I just showed the artist his sketch and had him tattoo it on my forearm. It looks like a stick person with big hair. It's pretty funny.

We are going to do 'Hot Tub' until we die. Every Monday. Then we'll come back and do it as zombies. 'Hot Tub' is very important. What we do is based on our live skills. It's stand-up and sketch and improv; everything we do in 'Hot Tub' is important to our jobs. And every Monday I'm excited to do it.

Whenever I've done a sketch in which I'm asked to play a mom, my brain goes to Minnesota. It makes the character seem matronly, warm, the kind of person that takes care of you and brings you Campbell's soup when you're sick. It's a great shortcut.

I went back over the sketch books I'd filled at Sheffield for ideas and discovered Wallace and Gromit, except Gromit was a cat then. I made them into Plasticene shapes and started 'A Grand Day Out.' It took me longer than I expected.

I think people are purists about what sketch comedy should be, and I think sometimes having too much fun can be a little annoying to some people.

So many designers only sketch and leave pattern-making to others. Pattern-making is important so you know the structure. Then if someone tells me, 'I can't make a pattern from that sketch,' I can tell them, 'I will make it' and then they are quiet. If I can't make it, I don't design it.

I did sketch comedy, but I never did improv. So I've just tried to learn as I go.

I was fascinated with the writing process and seeing the evolution of a sketch and how it would change up to the minute before it went on the air.

The best sketch shows are from a group of tight-knit people who've worked together for a really long time.

I steal props from 'SNL' a great deal. Almost every sketch I'm in, I try to grab something from it, so I have a storage space full of props.

I've done some version of that Minnesota accent - that Midwestern accent - in sketch comedy for years. It's the quickest way to symbolize you're a mom.

A sketch should be about two to three minutes, which is basically what most songs are. They're usually done by groups. Good examples of each build and have different parts and twists in them. I guess sketch would be the comedy version of music.

To tell you the truth, I always wanted to be a sketch comedian and a comedy actor.

I think sketch writing is a good spot for everyone to start because it requires you to develop characters, have a beginning, middle and end and have a bunch of jokes in a short amount of time.

No one will ever be as good as Phil Hartman. He was such an amazing genius, and may be the best sketch performer of all time.

My uncle worked in emergency wards dealing with people who came in with terrible injuries. He talked about the sketch shows they would put on to lighten the atmosphere. You often find this sense of grim humor in hospitals. The injuries people are suffering are ghastly. You have to laugh at something or you'd otherwise cry.

You asked what is the secret of a really good sketch. And it is a sketch is a small play. It's got a beginning, and a middle and an end. It should have a plot; it should have the characters, conflict. It is a little play. And in it, will be funny stuff.

Here in Hollywood you can actually get a marriage license printed on an Etch-A-Sketch.

Dealing with sketch comedy and buddy teams like Abbott and Costello, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby - I just loved buddy comedies.

There's no job like 'SNL.' There's no other job you go to where you're like, 'Oh, this is like that live, late-night sketch variety-musical show that shoots in, whatever it is, 10,000 feet of sound stage.' There's nothing like it.

It's certainly strange to do sketch comedy with cue cards at midnight in a skyscraper as opposed to in a basement with your friends.

I did a couple of sketch shows with Mike Palin and Terry Jones... and then I got hired by Granada to do a weekly topical show.

Because I never plan anything out ahead of time, I'm always in the process of learning about my characters. Without a biographical sketch to guide me, I discover things about my heroines as the stories unfold. Only in 'Body Double' did I discover that Maura's mother was a serial killer.

It's absolutely surprising to me how well 'The State' has held up as far as people liking it and having fond memories of it, considering it's a sketch show.

I'm a physical actor in that I start with a physical sketch of the character. I find it easier to find inspiration from the outside in. If I find the character's tensions and the way he carries himself or looks, that's going to affect how I talk. So that's how I start to create that person.

I was a baby when I began, but I knew exactly what I wanted to wear myself. I became a jewelry designer because I knew how to do something with a pencil and sketch my ideas.

My first real break was when my college sketch troupe, The State, was asked to contribute pieces for a new MTV show called 'You Wrote It, You Watch It.'

I didn't want to write sketch comedy after 'Mr. Show.' I felt like, after 'Mr. Show', why would you want to go work at any of the other places that existed then?

I was very bad at projecting my voice. I used to do this Gumby Flower Arranging sketch which involved shouting, and I could never do it right, and at one point my voice went completely.

I did B com but realised that it was not my cup of tea. I was always fascinated by animation, and after I completed my course, I wanted to go abroad and pursue it. I used to sketch a lot and was rather serious about it. But all this was until I joined films.

My experience is at The Groundlings Theater, where we created different characters and did sketch comedy. And sometimes the characters were outrageous, but they always came from a real place. So even working there, we had to create characters from the people that we knew.

Maybe it's just my improv and sketch background, but I'm a lot more comfortable in a group. I like sharing focus and populating an ensemble.

My friends say I make them laugh a lot, so I think that somewhere in me is a little comedic ability that comes out in the most inappropriate or unexpected moments. I did a lot of sketch comedy years ago. That's always in me.

I have done a sketch show almost every year since I started in 1975. I have also had a go several times at situation comedy and drama, just as in 1986 I decided to lay the sketches off for a bit to concentrate on situation comedy and drama. I am NOT giving up comedy. I love doing stand-up comedy and characters.

I did three and a half years in the architecture school with no real love or feel for it. After quite a while I realized I don't like to pick up a pen and freely sketch and let my imagination run towards structures. And if I don't have that natural desire, what am I doing here? How did I let this illusion go on so long?

I did sketch comedy with a troupe at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.

I did a really messy pencil sketch and then went to my computer and tried it out, to see if the planes all fit together.

I am a keen medievalist and like going around museums and ruins and finding out about the people and local culture. I'm not one for sitting by a pool or lying on a beach. I also like to sketch while I'm on holiday, if I have time.

I can help you shape your sitcom, I can help you think about what could make your sketch show better, but it won't help you get you a commission.

I had a sketch called 'Fedora Basketball,' which was about basketball players having to wear hats; in addition to scoring points, they have to make sure their fedoras don't fall off.

I am like a security camera ever on the watch. The furtive quality of vision feels to me like an incredibly valuable weapon. Everything I see gets transformed into a private sketch or painting in my mind, stored away for future reference, future evidence, future ammunition.

If I told my 18-year-old self that one day I'd have a sitcom and a sketch show on TV, I think he'd just drum his fingers and go, 'When? How long is that going to take?'

I'm a really gifted physical comedienne. I write and produce a lot of sketch comedy.

Stand-up for me is just my opinions on things, so it wouldn't be as fun translated into a sketch. Nor would a sketch be as fun if it were me standing there saying it.

Jeff puts his relationship first and foremost and realizes I do the same, so he really watches out for me and makes sure I don't have to do anything on the show that would upset David. I was warned when I started a sketch comedy show that they could be cutthroat, but it's been like a family.

Our goal is to produce a monthly vaudeville-style show with an eclectic mix of live music, juggling, dance and sketch comedy.

I think in 2006 we will introduce another Perrier, ... Some people want an international award, to separate the British from others, and others still want a pure standup award, with no slides or sketch comedy. It's my job now to canvass opinion as to what it should be.

I think in 2006 we will introduce another Perrier. Some people want an international award, to separate the British from others, and others still want a pure standup award, with no slides or sketch comedy. It's my job now to canvass opinion as to what it should be.

I still have a desire to do some sketch comedy. My dream is to be on 'SNL,' to host 'SNL.'

I was in a sketch group in L.A., and we were playing, like, backyards in Glendale and stuff. It was pretty ugly because we didn't have any money.

I think that one of Tim's great qualities and abilities is in what seems like a thumbnail sketch to get something quite telling, very simply, when you're doing it or being in that thumbnail sketch, you don't feel that it's important.

We have a longer window to get it right. We sketch out scenes and can see how they work before we commit to them. And we can go back and fiddle with them.

You can do everything towards a certain action but you'll achieve nothing if you don't sketch it on paper first

When some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St Paul's.

We have renewed our request to the American side and expressed the wish: if you can, give us the information whether such a secret study exists, is there a study with sketches, where do you believe such a sketch came from?

I did sketch comedy for years. Ive always enjoyed it.

Everybody needs some good sketch comedy.

Mitt Romney, who is on record saying that he would not waste money going after bin Laden, and on record saying he would not violate Pakistan's border to get bin Laden, this week said, 'Of course I would have gotten bin Laden.' Even his Etch-A-Sketch went, seriously?

Working off one genius sketch is not the way great architecture should be made.

Gas Attendant: "Thata ain't no etch-a-sketch. Thats one doodle that can't be un-did home skillet.

At this point, I feel fairly comfortable in terms of performance. I think having a sketch background actually helps a lot. Because my background is acting, and stand-up, in a lot of ways, is acting.

When I teach sketch writing, there's still a beginning, middle and end.

At the top you see a sketch of a sweet man. That's probably the man who got dissected.

You look at Beethoven's sketch book and he's working things out, trying this, trying that. Mozart didn't do that. He simply wrote it out. Beethoven did not have the same abilities that Mozart had. And you know how much Beethoven means to us. When you listen to the Ninth Symphony, it's one of the greatest accomplishments of all mankind, artistically certainly. But he shuddered when he thought of the shadow Mozart cast over music and he felt pressure, just like Brahms felt the pressure Beethoven's Ninth put on symphonic writing.

We wanted to at least sketch out what some of the potential changes are for people who live in these counties,

Before I put a sketch on paper, the whole idea is worked out mentally. In my mind I change the construction, make improvements, and even operate the device. Without ever having drawn a sketch I can give the measurements of all parts to workmen, and when completed all these parts will fit, just as certainly as though I had made the actual drawings. It is immaterial to me whether I run my machine in my mind or test it in my shop. The inventions I have conceived in this way have always worked. In thirty years there has not been a single exception. My first electric motor, the vacuum wireless light, my turbine engine and many other devices have all been developed in exactly this way.

We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always a sketch. No sketch is not quite the right word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch of nothing, an outline with no picture.

During my military service, I performed a sketch in which I played a flea called Max. So when critics kept misspelling my name, I decided to change it and thought, 'Ah! Max!'

I've always drawn. Through drawing, I got into building things I would contemplate and sketch out shapes in my head.

You really have no idea whether or not what you're writing is funny. In stand-up and sketch comedy, you know right away and you can make your changes accordingly.

I'm not the same person as the character I do in my songs. She's crazy! The 'Daddy Song' was the first sketch I ever wrote, especially on the guitar and everything - and definitely the most offensive. And absurd.

I'm not terribly well read. My wife forces books into my hands and insists I read them, which I'm grateful to her for. She made me read 'War and Peace.' The whole thing. It was amazing, but I had to hide it. You can't walk round reading 'War and Peace' - it's like you're in a comedy sketch and you think you're smart.

I normally keep a series of draft in a catalogue type of book in which I scribble, sketch and draw ideas.

I've just written this six-part sketch comedy series, which I've never done before. And I don't know how to pitch it. Am I supposed to just pick up a camera and put stuff on YouTube? Is that how it works?

A sketch is generally more spirited than a picture,

A pen is different from the pad, the key, moving your fingers across a screen. I like both. I like to work on sketchbooks, big old white sketch paper. I like how that feels, and I like to put different media on it. Then there's the phone, smartphone, iPad: It's the new page, and it's not the same page anymore.

I want to bring back some sketch comedy. I did work with a group called Manhattan Punch Line with Oliver Platt in the early '80s.

In the case of 'Sweet Tooth,' and in the case of a lot of stuff I do, it all starts with the image. It may be something I sketch in my sketchbooks - something that reoccurs in the sketchbooks. Eventually, a character or story line starts to grow out of that.

It's amazing how it can still find people to fill the shoes, ... There's always one sketch that makes me glad I tuned in. ... The show has proven something.

The CX-7 wasn't even a sketch on a cocktail napkin a little over two years ago. The fact that I'm standing here today watching the first CX-7 roll off the line marks a milestone in Mazda's ability to design and engineer vehicles for specific markets such as North America.

Nobody wants to see sketch comedy that's the same sketch they've seen time and time again, or that's just a rehash of that thing.

A couple of friends and I started a sketch comedy group when we were teenagers, just for fun and to start creating stuff. It was a blast.

It's less lonely. Sketch comedy is much more fun than stand-up. You can still have a good time when you're bombing in sketch comedy because at least you're bombing with other people.

For his time, that was revolutionary. That was the best sketch ever done of Mars.

Then we also have the official sketch that was drawn by an artist, Peter Craig, of what is now the Texas State Flag.

Comedy is really my passion. I started out way before television doing sketch comedy with other women. Very much along the lines of, at the time it was 'Sensible Footwear', but now it's 'Smack The Pony', 'French And Saunders', that kind of thing. That's how I started out.

I don't want you to sketch this cripple, this freak of nature, I want you to slaughter him, crucify him, to nail him to your paper with charcoal!

I call it the Etch A Sketch life. Every few years, you should shake that thing up.

If I could only turn the etch-a-sketch of my life upside down.

If the world was an etch-a-sketch, glaciers are the big shake.

This is one doodle that can't be undid homeskillet.

I could sketch out a score in different keys, a new way each time.