Quotes About Exaggeration

An exaggeration is a truth that has lost its temper. —KAHLIL GIBRAN, POET AND PHILOSOPHER

Humor comes out of the unexpected: If there's no surprise, there's no laugh. In a triple, as discussed in chapter seven, the first two lines are often straight lines; this is the realistic element. The third line is the surprise twist—logically related to the first two lines, but unexpected and exaggerated. Realism is the setup, while exaggeration is the joke. "Get your facts first," wrote Mark Twain, "and then you can distort them as much as you please.

Since comedy encourages the audience to suspend disbelief, humorists can take advantage of every opportunity to stretch the truth. In other circumstances, unmitigated exaggeration would be viewed as lying. In humor, clever exaggeration is rewarded with laughter.

Since it appears that exaggeration is the logical antithesis of realism, it may seem ludicrous to have both within the framework of one piece of humor. But good humor is a paradox—the unexpected juxtaposition of the reasonable next to the unreasonable—and that creates surprise. Think

The more exaggerated the musculature, the more it had to explain and justify itself in mounds of dead bodies.

You are so full of salami." "It's

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.

It is human to exaggerate the merits of the dead.

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

I couldn't believe it. That was the first time I had ever seen somebody celebrate for a whole 40-second clock. That was ridiculous.

I don't really tell a joke, I react to situations. The whole thing is just looking at somebody and showing all our weaknesses and exaggerating them, and that's how it becomes funny.

What happens, I think, is especially for comic effect you find something about yourself that you don't like. You exaggerate it, and it's funny.

You exaggerate your own reactions.

I tend to take [ to Bridget Jones Diaries] something that nearly happened, or might have happened, and then exaggerate it to make it funny and to make it tie into the themes.

What do you have when you have an agent buried up to his neck in sand? Not enough sand.

We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well that was probably true. They were all on a diet.

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

The more you exaggerate, the more you will look funny!

This is the biggest damn IPod I've ever seen, " Claire said, which made him choke on his beer. "Kidding. I have seen a jukebox before.

Hyperbolic statements will be the death of us all

When caricaturist, Al Hirschfeld, did a drawing of a celebrity, it often looked more like the person than the person did. That's our goal in animation.

I don't exaggerate - I just remember big

While he was talking at Baylor University, President Bush said, Times are kind of tough. He also pointed out that Bill Gates is kind of rich, that water is kind of wet, and that Elvis is kind of dead.