Humorists Quotes - Page 8

• Humorists are not humorous twenty-four hours a day. In fact, when you get to know them well, they are often not humorous at all. They tend to be hypersensitive, taut, neurotic creatures driven by God know what obscure compulsion to earn their living the hard way.

  Margaret Halsey

  Humorous, Four, Way

  Margaret Halsey (1946). “Color blind: a white woman looks at the Negro”

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• To say that a humorist exaggerates to get big laughs, I don't see how that's big news.

  David Sedaris

  Laughing, News, Bigs

  Interview with Tony DuShane, www.motherjones.com. July/August 2008.

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• It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.

  Mark Twain

  Criticism, Bears, Crime

  Mark Twain, Harriet Elinor Smith (2012). “Autobiography of Mark Twain: Reader's Edition”, p.201, Univ of California Press

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• As the tragic writer rids us of what is petty and ignoble in our nature, so also the humorist rids us of what is cautious, calculating, and priggish--about half of our social conscience, indeed. Both of them permit us, in blessed moments of revelation, to soar above the common level of our lives.

  Robertson Davies

  Blessed, Tragedy, Half

  Robertson Davies (1961). “The Personal Art: Reading to Good Purpose”, London : Secker & Warburg

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• PANTALOONS, n. A nether habiliment of the adult civilized male. The garment is tubular and unprovided with hinges at the points of flexion. Supposed to have been invented by a humorist. Called trousers by the enlightened and pants by the unworthy.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Adults, Males, Pants

  Ambrose Bierce (2012). “The Devil's Dictionary”, p.91, Courier Corporation

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• Humorists are always pessimists. They're reactionaries: because they see that every golden cloud has a black lining.

  Christina Stead

  Clouds, Black, Golden

  Christina Stead (2012). “I'm Dying Laughing: The Humourist”, p.28, Open Road Media

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• I learned as a young man that I don't write jokes, but that I can deliver more mundane material and get a laugh. I call myself a humorist.

  Nick Offerman

  Writing, Men, Laughing

  "The GQA: Nick Offerman". Interview with GQ, www.gq.com. July 3, 2012.

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• The audience is invisible and that's good. Somewhere my voice is drifting through a swine barn and the sound of it seems to perk up the sows' appetite. Or a lady is listening on headphones as she jogs along a beach, running to my cadence. Or a dog sits in front of the radio, head cocked, and the sibilants excite him in some mysterious way. A dog's humorist, that's me.

  Garrison Keillor

  Running, Dog, Beach

  Source: jonathanlowe.wordpress.com

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• You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humour teaches tolerance, and the humorist, with a smile and perhaps a sigh, is more likely to shrug his shoulders than to condemn.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  People, Laughing, Tolerance

  "The Summing Up". Book by W. Somerset Maugham, 1938.

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• Walking companions, like heroes, are difficult to pluck out of the crowd of acquaintances. Good dispositions, ready wit, friendly conversation serve well enough by the fireside but they prove insufficient in the field. For there you need transcendentalists-nothing less; you need poets, sages, humorists and natural philosophers.

  Brooks Atkinson

  Hero, Friendly, Sage

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• I don't want to be classed as a humorist. It makes me feel guilty. I've never read a good tough quotable female humorist, and I never was one myself. I couldn't do it. A "smartcracker" they called me, and that makes me sick and unhappy. There's a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.

  Dorothy Parker

  Distance, Sick, Unhappy

  Quoted in Paris Review, Summer 1956

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• I think that you are only obliged to be a humorist from the age of 18 until you turn 30. Past the age of 30 I don't think there is any obligation to be clever at all.

  Garrison Keillor

  Clever, Thinking, Past

  "Humor has to surprise us, otherwise it isn't funny". Interview with George Plimpton, blankonblank.org. November 28, 1994.

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• Great humorists are great insulters.

  Dick Cavett

  Dick Cavett (2010). “Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary, and Off-Screen Secrets”, p.192, Macmillan

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• And as Craig Brown - he's an English humorist, not a comedian but he's just a writer and humorist - I'm quite a fan of. I heard him talking in a rather similar way on the radio. He said I'm the sort of person - I can't remember exactly what he said, but it was rather interesting - he said I'm the sort of person that can be reduced to tears in an empty church and feel like I'm the CEO of the Devil's organization in a full one, and I tend to feel like that as well. I love empty churches and going into them looking around, but I'm not a churchgoer at all.

  Nick Lowe

  Talking, Organization, Interesting

  "Nick Lowe Brings His 'Quality Holiday Revue' To America". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. December 22, 2014.

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• Lampoon was exactly the opposite. The work was a lot of fun, but the office environment was hell. You cannot put 20 humorists together.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Fun, Opposites, Office

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• [ I'm] humorist, I guess. Or really more of a reporter. A reporter who reports on funny things.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Funny Things, Reporters, Reports

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• There aren't many political humorists. Dave Barry is excellent, but he doesn't do it much.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Political, Excellent, Dave

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• [Al] Franken is left-wing and funny. He's a pretty good political humorist.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Wings, Political, Als

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I've always been leery of comical artists because I think oftentimes they're hiding the fact that they're not that talented. For example, with Martin Kippenberger, I always thought he was a kind of poor man's Sigmar Polke - also a humorist - but Kippenberger used humor to get away with things he couldn't master.

  Diego Cortez

  Thinking, Artist, Kind

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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