I don't sit down to write a funny story. Every single thing I sit down to write is meant to be sad.

The funny thing is I'm not bothered or sad about being on my own - after all I've never had a husband.

For a culture that has such a problem with death, we seem to deal with it in a quite bizarre way. We see people shot, killed and blown up, and we find it funny and sexy and all those things. But, the reality of it is that every day people die, and people are really sad and they grieve and they go through a really difficult process with it.

As a writer, or as a filmmaker, you have to present yourself, and part of what yourself is is what you're interested in, or what you think is funny, or what you think is sad, or what you think is horrible.

I'm not a very serious person. You know how they say that clowns are very funny in public and are really sad at home? I'm really kind of stupid at home and more serious in public.

Since it's based on my parents, it's more emotionally close to me than some of my more surreal plays. And then I like the balance of the comic and the sad. It should play as funny, but you should care about the characters and feel sad for them.

Well, I did Marlene 15 years ago and that's in the style. It's somehow similar and not similar because Marlene was much more aggressive, funny and sad.

I love the script and I just thought it was a great role. Like I say, it's like this - the script is like this sad, funny, desperate love song to the lost American man.

I think I have a dark view of the world. I have to make everything funny, otherwise it all seems so sad.

Some really good things kind of swing both ways and I like to see people that can swing really, really, really sad and horrible and terrible and really, really, really beautiful and funny.

The books are funny and sad, and that's what people respond to.

Funny and sad are two sides of the same coin. I think that most comedians are able to tap into deep subject matter.

I love the sad songs with their maudlin, self-deprecating, almost funny lyrics. As an Englishman, they make a lot of sense.

We try to... we are, I suppose to a certain extent all affected and erm, that is both funny and sad I think.

What's funny about the slacker thing, people project an image of what they think a musician is: young, slack, unemployed - like a really romantic idea of a poet, writer or musician - which isn't really true a lot of the time. I don't reckon you would know anything about me if I wasn't moderately hard-working.

I think that sometimes, romantic comedies have to be really broad, and that the plot of people falling in and out of love or whatever is not enough. 'Enough Said' had that stuff, but I wanted it to be fun and funny while also grounded in reality.

I do feel like guys feel pressure to be funny with me, which is kind of annoying. It's a turn-off if someone's trying hard to be funny because it feels like they're auditioning for a comedy job or something. It doesn't feel romantic to me. I get so much comedy from my life that, from a guy, I'm more looking for something sweet or romantic.

I would say 80% of the scripts I get are dramas and not comedies or romantic comedies, which is funny because that's what I do every week.

An early editor characterized my books as 'romantic comedy for intelligent adults.' I think people see them as funny but kind. I don't set out to write either funny or kind, but it's a voice they like, quirky like me... And you know, people like happy endings.

I always thought 'chick lit' meant third-person contemporary funny novels, dealing with issues of the day. I mean, it's not the ideal term; when I'm asked to describe what I do, I say I write romantic comedies, cause that's what I feel they are. But I'm quite pragmatic.

I would love to write a mystery - a romantic, funny mystery.

I was the female lead in a romantic comedy. It's a little indie film that we shot in China called 'America Town,' starring Daniel Henney and Bill Paxton. I actually had to speak Chinese in the film. It was funny because I found out I was doing the film and then a week later, I was in Shanghai.

It's funny, I can sit through the worst horror film ever made but even a quite good romantic comedy can drive me nuts.

The reason I turn down 99% of a hundred, I mean a thousand, scripts is because romantic comedies are often very romantic but seldom very funny.