Quotes About Jokes

I was interned in Auschwitz for one year. I didn't bring back anything, except for a few jokes, and that filled me with shame. Then again, I didn't know what to do with this fresh experience. For this experience was no literary awakening, no occasion for professional or artistic introspection.

alchemy of friendship, to mutually transform the humiliation of life into private jokes?

In all the works on pedagogy that ever I read — and they have been many, big, and heavy — I don't remember that any one has advocated a system of teaching by practical jokes, mostly cruel. That, however, describes the method of our great teacher, Experience.

When does a joke become a dad joke? When it becomes apparent. I, for one, like Roman numerals. Yesterday, a clown held a door open for me. I thought it was a nice jester. Why is it a bad idea to iron your four-leaf clover? Because you shouldn't press your luck.

Why do vampires have no friends? They suck.

Seinfeld was typically American in that show. He was a pretty funny guy, but he had no sense of style. Tacky like a Texan tux. Tasteless dressing and tasteful jokes. That's Seinfeld for me. I would have preferred it the other way around.

The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds.

One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.

Audiences of critical thinkers are my favorite kinds of audiences. There are jokes I tell in the show that don't get laughs unless I am in front of an audience of critical thinkers. Put me in front of a crowd of science teachers or astronauts! The guileless aren't our audience - it's the critical thinkers we love.

Anybody can make jokes. But unless they come from conviction, and there's truth in them, you haven't nailed it. They aren't as funny as they could be, and they don't make a point.

People ask me if they can send me material, and some people give or send it to me unsolicited, but I rarely buy jokes.

If you like quick put-downs and aggressive interactions with the audience, you will probably not enjoy the rambles of an unusual character act making jokes about cats for an hour.

I like to have my characters talking in an up-to-date way, and I like their essentially modern self-awareness, which means we can have lots of irony and jokes.

I had written for Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman in the past. Jimmy had a different voice, and different priorities. He couldn't be the bad guy in the joke; he couldn't upset people, really.

'All Def' is unlike any other comedy show or set because 'All Def' goes back to the essence of how urban comedy started. We give it a 'stoop appeal.' A stoop appeal is important for us because it's where pretty much all black comics started doing their standup: cracking jokes on the stoop, in the hood.

My father taught me to work, but not to love it. I never did like to work, and I don't deny it. I'd rather read, tell stories, crack jokes, talk, laugh -- anything but work.

I'm pretty laid-back in real life. I just love hanging with my friends and making jokes. The jokes don't stop - literally, all day.

I write these shows one joke at a time. There's no continuity. I do try to figure an order to the stories, but there's not continuity.

I think people like musicals. And when done with a modern comedic sensibility, musical comedy can be the most efficient delivery of both storytelling and jokes.

Strangely enough, I don't mention my sister too much in my columns because she nags me and says, 'Don't make me look foolish. Don't write nonsense about me. Don't make jokes about me.'

A couple of weeks ago, I did karaoke and got nervous in a way I hadn't gotten nervous in 25 years. I'm so used to getting on stage in front of strangers to tell jokes, but singing is a whole different animal.

Puns are the E. coli of humor,

Working with Chaplin was very amusing and strange. His films are so funny, but working with him, I found him to be a very serious man. Whereas the films of Hitchcock are macabre, he could be a very funny man to work with, always telling jokes and holding court. Of course, when I worked with Charlie he was getting older.

When I go to a cinema, I don't care if the film is made by a man or a woman as long as it tells me a story, as long as it offers pictures that shed light on my existence, characters I can identify with, jokes I can laugh at.