Quotes About Jokes

AS A PROFESSIONAL HUMORIST, I OFTEN GET LETTERS from readers who are interested in the basic nature of humor. "What kind of a sick, perverted, disgusting person are you," these letters typically ask, "that you make jokes about setting fire to a goat?

sarcasm and jokes were often the bottle in which clinical depressives sent out their most plangent screams for someone to care and help them.

Great short stories and great jokes have a lot in common. Both depend on what communication-theorists sometimes call "exformation," which is a certain quantity of vital information removed from but evoked by a communication in such a way as to cause a kind of explosion of associative connections within the recipient. This is probably why the effect of both short stories and jokes often feels sudden and percussive, like the venting of a long-stuck valve.

of course, great short stories and great jokes have a lot in common. Both depend on what communications theorists sometimes call exformation, which is a certain quantity of vital information removed from but evoked by a communication in such a way as to cause a kind of explosion of associative connections within the recipient.

There are millions of comedians around or certainly there were when I started. They play nightclubs, or on TV, or at private functions, and they all need material: jokes, bits, routines, something to say. Most of them were not very good as evidenced by the fact that they needed other people to put words in their mouth, funny words. If left on their own, they couldn't coax a chuckle from a manic fat man on laughing gas.

You want to do mankind a real service? Tell funnier jokes.

Love: the sickest of Irony's sick jokes. The place where logic and order go to die.

The most casual examination will reveal the fact that all the jokes about the horrible results of masculine cooking and sewing are written by men. It is all part of a great scheme of sex propaganda.

We're enemies, no matter how many jokes he tells or how friendly he seems. Charmers are charming, but that's all they are.

I know I've been laughing and making jokes and whatever, so you probably think I'm a heartless bitch, but it's like a defense mechanism or something.

I once read that in vaudeville, it was often the straight guy who got paid more than the comic because that's the tougher job. He has to set up the jokes in just the right way.

If you look at vaudeville in theaters vamping between acts, it was always jokes written and banter in the moment.

I have about 1,000 hours of myself on tape in a vault in Los Angeles. But I also have a photographic memory about my jokes, because they're really about me; they're my stories.

With Twitter, it's a little harder to tell jokes that somebody hasn't heard already. You have all these people out there sharing their opinions and telling jokes in real time, and by the time you get on, somebody's already done some version of what you're trying to do.

I'm terrified that one offhand joke, one out-of-context remark, will set into motion a public shaming, because I see it happen every day.

Claude's father was one of those guys who thought if you didn't laugh, it was because you hadn't heard the joke clearly enough.

The State trained us to make other people's terrible jokes work, which is the other part of the game when you're here.

The brain process that results in a joke materializing where no joke was before remains a mystery. I'm not aware of any scholarly, scientific or neurological studies on the subject.

I like really stupid comedies.

People are always going to say stupid things, and you're always going to be able to make jokes about that, but it should be the last thing you add in, because it's the easiest thing.

I don't see anyone avoiding the Stones because DJs make jokes about them being a part of the Geritol set. All it does is make the DJs look stupid.

I definitely am a performer, and there are different styles of stand-up; I mean, some people are writers and they get onstage to get jokes out, and that's definitely not what I do. I like to just go up and, if I'm telling a story about someone, I'll play his or her part.

I'm just a regular boy who goofs around, pulls pranks, and makes jokes. I'm not Mr. Debonair Suave. I'm just a regular boy who goofs around, pulls pranks, and makes jokes. That doesn't sound very hot to me.

For starters, let's dispense with the cheap jokes about cannibalism. That means cracks about giving an arm and a leg - sorry - for a good book on the subject, or similar tasteless - sorry, again - attempts to make the subject more palatable - last one.