Quotes About Author

I'm not a joke guy; I'm not a stand-up comic.

There's always someone who's going to interpret my material as racist, but it's not. Racism comes from intent and power. A racist will tell a joke about a group of people only when they're not in the room. I'll talk about a group of people only when they're in the room.

I can't write a joke. I could never write. I do a lot of stories and I call them stories, but they're just comedy recitals on a given subject.

Denny O'Neil did some great things with Joker - I thought Greg Rucka used him really well in 'Gotham Central.'

If you actually read the 'New Gods' tetralogy, this epic without an ending, it's like dipping your head into madness. You feel a little bit like the Joker for a little while. And I mean that in the best way possible.

I make jokes because humor is the greatest healing factor that there is.

Comedy, at least the way I write comedy, is just drama with jokes.

I think of myself as a writer with a sense of humour rather than a comedy writer. Happy to tell a story with lots of jokes in it - I wouldn't know how to do jokes without the story.

Yes, I would say my comedy is grunge, evidenced by the fact my jokes have put an end to big-hair glam comedy.

I like the idea of using cool cyberpunk stuff to tell really stupid jokes.

Everyone was doing alternative comedy. I thought I'd distinguish myself by just telling jokes, with differing degrees of success.

Don't get me wrong, I'm under no illusions, I've got a very old-school, mainstream leaning to the way I present my comedy because I actually like jokes and don't just do observational stuff.

Among the many subjects which interested me, I dwelt especially upon antiquity, for our own age has always repelled me, so that, had it not been for the love of those dear to me, I should have preferred to place myself in spirit in other ages, and consequently I delighted in history.

In the midst of a full-blown disaster – with the house apparently self-destructing around them – Lila was calmly filing her nails.

Truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not shew the masks and mummeries and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candlelights.

Men possessing minds which are morose, solemn, and inflexible enjoy generally a greater share of dignity than of happiness.

Aristotle ... a mere bond-servant to his logic, thereby rendering it contentious...

MEN fear death, as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children, is increased with tales, so is the other.

The first remedy or prevention is to remove, by all means possible, that material cause of sedition whereof we spake; which is, want and poverty in the estate.

The virtue of prosperity, is temperance; the virtue of adversity, is fortitude; which in morals is the more heroical virtue.

I think of him, in those days, as a remote figure — a square-shouldered silhouette posed motionless on the bridge against a background of burning blue sky.

I THE IDEA OF TRUST The Improbable Power of Culture in the Making of Economic Society

Lant Pritchett, Michael Woolcock, and Matt Andrews have argued that one of the big problems with developing countries' governments is that they engage in what they term "isomorphic mimicry," that is, copying the outward forms of developed countries' governments, while being unable to reproduce the kinds of outputs, like education and health, that the latter achieve.

Clientelism is an efficient form of political mobilization in societies with low levels of income and education, and is therefore best understood as an early form of democracy.