Humor & Life Quote by Keenen Ivory Wayans

Every comedian has a graveyard of “killer” bits that died in the edit. Keenen Ivory Wayans’ line lands because it punctures the romantic myth that great comedy is a lightning strike you simply capture. Instead, it’s carpentry: you build, you test, you cut. “Rare instances” is the sly part. It’s a softener that admits the ego involved in declaring something “a great scene” in the first place. The subtext is brutal and familiar to anyone who’s made something: your attachment is not evidence of quality.

Wayans is speaking from a culture of ensemble sketch and studio comedy where pacing is oxygen. A scene can be well-written, well-acted, even genuinely funny, and still be wrong for the larger machine - the episode’s rhythm, the character’s arc, the audience’s attention span, the network’s standards. Comedy isn’t only about jokes; it’s about momentum, escalation, and surprise. A “great” scene that explains too much, repeats a beat, or changes the tone by five degrees can quietly sabotage everything around it.

There’s also a leadership note here. Wayans, as a creator and showrunner figure, is signaling taste as discipline: protecting the final product from the creator’s vanity. The intent isn’t self-denial for its own sake; it’s loyalty to the whole. The line doubles as advice and a warning: if you can’t kill your darlings, your darlings will kill your show.