“That is the saving grace of humor, if you fail no one is laughing at you.”
― A. Whitney Brown
“Democratic politicians have disliked things I’ve written, Republican politicians… if they all love you, you might as well be driving a Good Humor truck.”
― Adam Clymer
“I still haven’t found the humor in getting hit by a cement truck. My knees still hurt when I think about it, so no jokes about that yet.”
― Adam DeVine
“Being Jewish is a big part of my artistic sensibility and my humor… I think it gives me a certain take on the world on a literary level.”
― Adam Mansbach
“I don’t think arrested-adolescent humor will fade. Maybe the form will change, but I guarantee its replacement will still be based in immature behavior from mature figures.”
― Adam McKay
“I’ve used my sense of humor as a coping tool. It’s gotten me through a lot of challenging times.”
― Adam Rippon
“I think ‘Piranha’ won’t be in the guilty-pleasure category, because it’s gonna be – well, yeah, maybe for some people. From what I’ve seen, it has a sense of humor about itself, and it’s also really scary and really, really violent. I would call it a popcorn movie from the planet Popcorn.”
― Adam Scott
“Poor David Hume is dying fast, but with more real cheerfulness and good humor and with more real resignation to the necessary course of things, than any whining Christian ever dyed with pretended resignation to the will of God.”
― Adam Smith
“I’ve hung on for a long time in this business and had some success, and I think it’s keeping an open mind and being curious and having a sense of humor about oneself that’s important.”
― Adam West
“My paintings capture the humor, zaniness, and depth of the Batman villains as well as the Freudian motivations of Batman as an all-too-human, venerable, and funny vigilante superhero.”
― Adam West
“I get called ‘Mayor West’ a lot in airports. I’ve been very fortunate to have a fan base that keeps growing, and the work gets such a warm response and humor from people.”
― Adam West
“David Ayer is known for being a very serious filmmaker, but he has a very great sense of humor.”
― Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje
“The beauty of comedy is you can really push things. Hopefully, you’re with people with a sense of humor and can relate to it.”
― Adrien Brody
“Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding.”
― Agnes Repplier
“Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals.”
― Agnes Repplier
“Comedy is difficult for an actor. But I think I have a good sense of humor and manage to make people laugh and make them happy.”
― Aishwarya Rai Bachchan
“Humor and seriousness are not in opposition to each other.”
― Al Franken
“Bob Dole used to be really funny. Barney Frank can be kind of funny. Bob Kerrey has a good sense of humor.”
― Al Franken
“There is – I mean – I found early in life that righteous indignation is a little off-putting, and so I try to couch it with humor.”
― Al Franken
“There’s plenty of room for humor in politics, God knows, but it’s a serious business.”
― Al Franken
“If you look at terrorists, they really have no sense of humor.”
― Al Franken
“One of my pet peeves is that sometimes the talents of my band get overlooked because, and it was the same problem that Frank Zappa had, with a lot of groups that use humor, people don’t realize there’s a lot of craft behind the comedy.”
― Al Yankovic
“It’s hard to force creativity and humor.”
― Al Yankovic
“We get the worrywart, the hypochondriac, the money-grubbing miser, the intractable negotiator… Some would say certain of these refer to the stereotypical, or ‘stage’ Jew. But objectively speaking, the only crime in humor is an unfunny joke.”
― Alan King
“If you stop and think about it, nearly all great humor is at the expense of someone or something.”
― Alan King
“And humor has always been a weapon. You want to get even on somebody? You want to attack somebody? Make fun of them.”
― Alan King
“There’s a charm, there’s a rhythm, there’s a soul to Jewish humor. When I first saw Richard Pryor perform, I told him, ‘You’re doing a Jewish act.’”
― Alan King
“I’m not a particularly dark individual. I have my moments, it’s true, but I do have a sense of humor.”
― Alan Moore
“Never make a joke or try for humor at someone else’s expense. In a high-stakes environment, everyone needs to feel safe.”
― Alan Mulally
“If one tends to be a humorous person and you have a sense of humor the rest of your life then you can certainly lighten the load, I think, by bringing that to your trials and tribulations. It’s easy to have a sense of humor when everything is going well.”
― Alan Thicke
“There are psychological repercussions to illness and we need a little more help to get through the effects not only on the afflicted but on the family. And I think there’s even a place for humor in that.”
― Alan Thicke
“In my opinion, I think sarcasm and humor in a song, without turning it into a novelty song, is really charming.”
― Alanis Morissette
“Down the road, I’ll probably have a kid or two or three. And there will probably be political events or spiritual things to comment on, and humor.”
― Alanis Morissette
“I can’t not put humor in a book.”
― Albert Brooks
“My humor is traced with dark – I’ve got dark patches all over the place.”
― Albert Brooks
“The wealthy don’t have any sense of humor. It’s not like the English, where the theater is perhaps the one place where they have a sense of humor about themselves.”
― Alec Baldwin
“We are fans of Mozart and Beethoven, as well ‘South Park’ and Borat. We believe that we can attract many people who eschew the serious ambiance of concert halls and don’t go to classical music concerts because of such reasons. However, there is a ‘serious humor’ on the stage: funny and ridiculous. That is important!”
― Aleksey Igudesman
“From the very beginning, I started doing music performances with a lot of theatrical aspects to them, where humor was a part of it but not necessarily had to be. Humor is just another tool to make the palette more rich and interesting for myself and eventually for the public. It’s a great way to break out of convention.”
― Aleksey Igudesman
“Our first show, ‘A Little Nightmare Music,’ encompasses a lot of zany humor with beautiful classical music.”
― Aleksey Igudesman
“I think humor can be an effective way of getting the point across, but there are definitely times where I just write very earnestly.”
― Alex Pareene
“Someone asked me what the key to being a good frontman was, and I think having a sense of humor about it is pretty near the top of that list. It’s a very strange place to be in, and I don’t take that role too seriously.”
― Alex Turner
“The great thing about ‘Weeds’ is that everything we do is never quite serious enough to be taken seriously. It always has humor behind it, and it think it makes it definitely more fun for the audience.”
― Alexander Gould
“I get asked, ‘How can you have such failures in your films?’ Well, what else is life about? There’s some sense of constant failure in something. Humor gives you a distance from it.”
― Alexander Payne
“Wit is the lowest form of humor.”
― Alexander Pope
“I’m a huge fan of Steve Martin. He’s hilarious, but he has this depth to him and this way of dealing with the difficult things in life with a sense of humor that I think has helped me as an actress.”
― Alexandra Daddario
“I majored in extracurriculars, honestly. I joined the Harvard Stand Up Comedy Society, which is a ragtag band of misfits. I wrote for ‘On Harvard Time,’ which was a student TV show trying to be ‘The Daily Show.’ And I wrote a humor column for ‘The Crimson’ starting my sophomore year.”
― Alexandra Petri
“The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.”
― Alfred North Whitehead
“The sense of humor has other things to do than to make itself conspicuous in the act of laughter.”
― Alice Meynell
“I don’t really like using ridicule as a form of humor.”
― Alison Jackson
“Your attitude is like a box of crayons that color your world. Constantly color your picture gray, and your picture will always be bleak. Try adding some bright colors to the picture by including humor, and your picture begins to lighten up.”
― Allen Klein
“A little perspective, like a little humor, goes a long way.”
― Allen Klein
“You may not be able to change a situation, but with humor you can change your attitude about it.”
― Allen Klein
“Sometimes it takes ten seconds to see some humor in your dilemmas, sometimes ten years.”
― Allen Klein
“Humor can be one of our best survival tools.”
― Allen Klein
“Laughter, and the broader category of humor, are key elements in helping us go on with our life after a loss.”
― Allen Klein
“Humor expands our limited picture frame and gets us to see more than just our problem.”
― Allen Klein
“Any attempts at humor immediately after September 11th were deemed tasteless.”
― Allen Klein
“Throughout history, great leaders have known the power of humor.”
― Allen Klein
“Humor can help you cope with the unbearable so that you can stay on the bright side of things until the bright side actually comes along.”
― Allen Klein
“Advertisers also know that humor can help bond us to their product.”
― Allen Klein
“Humor can alter any situation and help us cope at the very instant we are laughing.”
― Allen Klein
“When we are dealing with death we are constantly being dragged down by the event: Humor diverts our attention and lifts our sagging spirits.”
― Allen Klein
“Whether planned or not, humor takes our mind off of our troubles.”
― Allen Klein
“Since the goal of my programs is to show audiences how humor can both help them heal as well as deal with not-so-funny stuff, I decided to discuss the events of the previous week, the pain all of us were feeling, and how humor and some laughter might be beneficial.”
― Allen Klein
“In looking for humor, keep in mind this guideline: Sometimes it takes a little time to see the humor in your upsets; you may not find something to laugh about immediately.”
― Allen Klein
“When you do find humor in trying times, one of the first and most important changes you experience is that you see your perplexing problems in a new way – you suddenly have a new perspective on them.”
― Allen Klein
“Today’s business and health care climate may not be pleasant. Cutbacks, pay cuts and layoffs do not make anyone’s job easy. But that does not mean that the humor need stop.”
― Allen Klein
“When we can find some humor in our upsets, they no longer seem as large or as important as they once did.”
― Allen Klein
“Humor does not diminish the pain – it makes the space around it get bigger.”
― Allen Klein
“I love poking fun at myself. I have a rather mean sense of humor.”
― Alton Brown
“From the ages of 12 to 35 my body, not my mind, was my primary currency. My ideas, my humor, my curiosity – none of those were valued as much as my body, which preceded me into almost every room.”
― Amanda de Cadenet
“After spending 460 days as a hostage, I did emerge a fundamentally changed person. But I think, like everyone does as they grow older and probably wiser, I can look back at my earlier life – my history, my mistakes, the joy I felt as a young woman traveling the world – with some objectivity and even some humor.”
― Amanda Lindhout
“I’m a big fan of gallows humor. When my aunt passed away, she was in a coma for a day before my cousins pulled the plug. And the amount of joking and base humor that went on that day around her bed was so insane. It’s crazy how people talk when something horrible is happening.”
― Amanda Peet
“I liked the humor of it, I’ve always enjoyed a sense of humor in God and in religion and in spirituality.”
― Amber Tamblyn
“Wit – the salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.”
― Ambrose Bierce
“Both conservatives and liberals watch ‘Parks and Recreation,’ and they each think the show is for them, which is really cool. ‘SNL’ was totally different. It was exciting because everyone was paying attention. Political humor works when people know what you’re talking about.”
― Amy Poehler
“I’ve always been really dark, and drawn to darker humor. Nothing has been forced, and I don’t say anything for shock value.”
― Amy Schumer
“There’s humor in everything. There’s gotta be humor in everything.”
― Amy Sedaris
“I don’t think that there’s necessarily a side to drama that has to be completely bleak. You have to have a flicker of humor ’cause everyone has a flicker of humor, something they find funny in life.”
― Amy Seimetz
“I like men who have goals, something that they are passionate about and work hard to achieve. A good sense of humor is important too. And I like tall guys!”
― Ana Ivanovic
“I’m a huge Muppets fan. Gigantic. I think they’re genius. I think they’re some of the best work out there and completely underrated, just because of how genius they are. I love that kind of humor. It’s so innocent but brilliant.”
― Andie MacDowell
“In my experience, if people don’t have a sense of humor, they are usually not very good scientists, either.”
― Andre Geim
“The waltz is a very important part of my life. It’s a very important way for me to express my positiveness, bringing humor to the world.”
― Andre Rieu
“It’s no big secret that ‘thinking’ women, since they are already gifted with fully functioning brains, are more than happy to have a yummy not-so-smart man in their lives. All we ask for is a sense of humor, a sense of hygiene, and the sense to not cheat.”
― Andrea Jeremiah
“There’s so much humor in serious things sometimes.”
― Andrea Navedo
“I lean toward anything with a dark sense of humor. And since I’ve been out of school, the majority of my books have been contemporary; basically, I like my characters to have electricity – even better, a TV.”
― Andrea Seigel
“A good-humored wife who appreciates most, if not all, of my humor – her price is far above rubies, as the book of Proverbs doesn’t quite say.”
― Andrew Hudgins
“I find any sort of acting that doesn’t have any humor in it is mind-numbingly boring. ‘Serious acting’ is the kind of acting that I don’t ever respond to.”
― Andrew Scott
“I find any sort of acting that doesn’t have any humor in it is mind-numbingly boring.”
― Andrew Scott
“Even as a kid I was never the generator of humor, but I always knew who was funny, who to hang out with.”
― Andrew Stanton
“I have a very dark sense of humor.”
― Andy Dick
“I’m going to do a lot of weird stuff that’s not going to be like me prancing around like an insane 12-year-old. I showed everybody that side of me and I think it’s time to do different stuff, even when it comes down to the type of humor. I want to do some drier, weirder stuff.”
― Andy Milonakis
“There is very little room for humor and personality in hip-hop.”
― Andy Mineo
“Bringing humor and bringing happiness and joy to an audience is a wonderful opportunity in life, believe me.”
― Angela Lansbury
“’Blithe Spirit’ is played almost all over Britain somewhere at all times because it is such a unique and ridiculously funny show. But it’s also, in fact, under those layers of humor, a very serious show. It’s quite misogynistic.”
― Angela Lansbury
“My father, Leo Henry Brown, really was talented – he could write. He had a gift, and he had a great, sly humor.”
― Angie Dickinson
“I stay far away from political humor.”
― Anjelah Johnson
“I’m not really big on slapstick humor. I like gentle humor.”
― Anjelica Huston
“Sometimes when I try to make jokes or have a sense of humor in interviews, it doesn’t go over very well. But Twitter made my life easier in this way that I didn’t expect. It would have taken probably 10 times as long for people to accept my voice and my sense of humor if I didn’t have Twitter.”
― Anna Kendrick
“Kindness is really important to me in finding my own prince – so are patience and a sense of humor. Without those qualities he’s no Prince Charming!”
― Anne Hathaway
“We can’t understand when we’re pregnant, or when our siblings are expecting, how profound it is to have a shared history with a younger generation: blood, genes, humor. It means we were actually here, on Earth, for a time – like the Egyptians with their pyramids, only with children.”
― Anne Lamott
“Everyone is flailing through this life without an owner’s manual, with whatever modicum of grace and good humor we can manage.”
― Anne Lamott
“I have a very dark sense of humor. I swear. I have a very playful relationship with Jesus.”
― Anne Lamott
“I’m interested in humor, and greeting cards just happen to be a perfect medium for my message. They’re accessible to everyone, and thanks to all the advances that have been made by environmentally conscientious printers, I can get my message across while keeping my carbon footprint relatively small.”
― Anne Taintor
“I realize that humor isn’t for everyone. It’s only for people who want to have fun, enjoy life, and feel alive.”
― Anne Wilson Schaef
“Since the very beginning, Emeril’s had a sense of humor about me calling him names and poking fun at him.”
― Anthony Bourdain
“I’ve got a great sense of humor.”
― Anthony Hopkins
“The New Zealand sense of humor is tough and realistic. Jokes are not surreal; they are about life and death and tough decisions.”
― Anthony McCarten
“I was born with a mother who loved me unconditionally and with a sense of humor.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“I love the diversity of America. I love the plain, normal sense of humor Americans have. It is not wicked, like in some countries. And I also love how new America is.”
― Antonio Banderas
“Cervantes is the most important Spanish writer. But he is not the most representative of the Spanish. His irony, his sense of humor – they are too subtle to seem Spanish.”
― Antonio Munoz Molina
“With song titles, I try to keep a healthy sense of humor while saying something at the same time.”
― Arca
“I was a precocious only child, and then I went through a fat, awkward stage for several years, so I learned to fall back on my humor and personality when I was growing up. It’s how you survive, so I think it was more of a natural progression for me, developing into comedy.”
― Ari Graynor
“I prefer situational or character-based humor to gross-out gags and comedic set pieces.”
― Ari Graynor
“The secret to humor is surprise.”
― Aristotle
“Basically, I think you need two things to get by in this world: a sense of humor and the ability to laugh when your ego is destroyed.”
― Arlo Guthrie
“Along with a sense of humor, my songs have to be sincere, and they have to be sung from a position of inner conviction.”
― Arlo Guthrie
“I’m a pretty tenacious person; I get that from my mom. So sometimes, I use dark humor. I can’t take myself too seriously.”
― Art Alexakis
“The president of General Motors was in a foul humor.”
― Arthur Hailey
“There’s not a lot of other stuff I admire about his content, but there’s something about Howard Stern and his perseverance in a very difficult industry. He does tickle me in certain ways with humor.”
― Ashleigh Banfield
“’Sit Here and Cry’ was one of the first songs I wrote with that overdramatic sarcastic dry sense of humor, which is why the energy of the song doesn’t necessarily reflect the subject matter.”
― Aubrie Sellers
“I love people who make me laugh. I honestly think it’s the thing I like most, to laugh. It cures a multitude of ills. It’s probably the most important thing in a person.”
― Audrey Hepburn
“Humor is one of the best ingredients of survival.”
― Aung San Suu Kyi
“Once we got over the origin story, we could really delve deeper into their lives and characters and angst. So this movie actually has more heart, more humor.”
― Avi Arad
“I’m sure there are people who survive tragedy without humor, but I’ve never met any of them. Nor would I be particularly interested in writing about them if I did meet them.”
― Ayelet Waldman
“Every time I’ve done comedy in, like, traditional comedy clubs, there’s always these comedians that do really well with audiences but that the other comedians hate because they’re just, you know, doing kind of cheap stuff like dancing around or doing, like, very kind of base sex humor a lot, and stuff like that.”
― Aziz Ansari
“My senior year of high school, I was voted ‘Wittiest.’ So, several years later, I decided to try my hand at writing humor to see if I could be witty enough to make some money.”
― Barbara Park
“Colombian humor is very black, very sarcastic.”
― Barbet Schroeder
“Christina Hoff Sommers is a self-identified feminist and registered Democrat with a Ph.D. in philosophy and a wicked sense of humor.”
― Bari Weiss
“In sitcoms, the women are so beautiful, understanding and well-bred. They have humor, but sort of display it with a twinkle of the eye and not a guffaw. But there’s no juice in that for me.”
― Bea Arthur
“I love British humor. It’s just so – surreal.”
― Beck
“Rather than writing about my experiences with other people, ‘Ugly Cherries’ is the first song I’ve ever written about myself. It’s a confrontation: an attempt to unpack my own queerness with humor and self care.”
― Ben Hopkins
“Funnily enough, I did a play called ‘Jumpy’ on the West End before I did ‘Divergent,’ and there was an essence of that character I played, called Cam, in Will. In the sense of his vulnerability, and… he had a sense of humor that comes out of adversity, similar to Will.”
― Ben Lloyd-Hughes
“In Australia, even the darkest subject matter has a little pinch of humor. A little sweet to make the sour go down.”
― Ben Mendelsohn
“I’m not an expert on the Malaysian sense of humor.”
― Ben Stiller
“What we’ve discovered is that Americans seem to love our saucy humor.”
― Benny Hill
“Negative humor is forgotten immediately. It’s the stuff that makes us feel better about our lives that lives long. Much more satisfying. Enter children’s books.”
― Berkeley Breathed
“I’m a bug on acting, which distinguishes Second City from a lot of other revues. It comes from the character, the behavior, and not from the jokes. I don’t think jokes are funny. Humor comes out of character and out of situations the character is in.”
― Bernard Sahlins
“What a strange world this would be if we all had the same sense of humor.”
― Bernard Williams
“I want to have fun. Life ain’t no dress rehearsal. I want to have fun. I’m a comedian; I ain’t no politician. So everything I do is with humor, with love.”
― Bernie Mac
“My humor had changed from foolishness to making sense.”
― Bernie Mac
“The man with the real sense of humor is the man who can put himself in the spectator’s place and laugh at his own misfortune.”
― Bert Williams
“I like bawdy humor. I love bawdy humor, but not dirty humor.”
― Betty White
“Well, I mean, if a joke or humor is bawdy, it’s got to be funny enough to warrant it. You can’t just have it bawdy or dirty just for the sake of being that – it’s got to be funny.”
― Betty White
“I have a self-deprecating sense of humor, so I knock myself.”
― Big Show
“We are, in the comics, the last frontier of good, wholesome family humor and entertainment.”
― Bil Keane
“Jesus must have had a sense of humor. I like to think of Him as a guy who got people to listen to Him by leaving them laughing and chuckling with one another.”
― Bil Keane
“My favorite kind of humor is basically, if it was happening to you, it wouldn’t be funny, but to observe it, it’s hilarious.”
― Bill Burr
“They say you don’t want to meet your heroes, but those two guys, you do want to meet them, because they do not disappoint. Walken has this amazing sense of humor, and Pacino is like just a sweetheart of a guy.”
― Bill Burr
“Perhaps naively I thought people understand what humor was, that it was invented by the human race to cope with the dark areas of life, problems and terrors.”
― Bill Forsyth
“It’s always funny until someone gets hurt. Then it’s just hilarious.”
― Bill Hicks
“Humor is everywhere in that there’s irony in just about anything a human does.”
― Bill Nye
“I think it’s part of the responsibility of an artist to shock, to upset, to make people think differently, and to surprise people. And that’s where the good humor is, if there’s a surprise and there’s something unexpected. Something that’s not normal, not in the realm of general living expectations.”
― Bill Plympton
“We are not actually in charge of life, yet behave as if we are the masters of our own destiny. The realization of this fact is quite a hard one. The ridiculousness of our pomposity and presumption can only result in anger or humor.”
― Billy Childish
“There’s something very authentic about humor, when you think about it. Anybody can pretend to be serious. But you can’t pretend to be funny.”
― Billy Collins
“Humor, for me, is really a gate of departure. It’s a way of enticing a reader into a poem so that less funny things can take place later. It really is not an end in itself, but a means to an end.”
― Billy Collins
“You have to have a sense of humor about all of it – the Emmys and politics and everything.”
― Billy Eichner
“I think if I would have started BIG in America, I would probably never have called it BIG. There was nothing but a little bit of local small country humor in the idea.”
― Bjarke Ingels
“I’ve always had a very dry sense of humor, and I’ve pretty much grown up on Will Ferrell, first on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ then ‘Old School’ and ‘Wedding Crashers.’”
― Blake Griffin
“I came from a dysfunctional family – very dysfunctional. And my father used to find great humor in throwing me down the stairs.”
― Bob Beckel
“I like jokes, but Ray and I, we never did jokes. We weren’t in that line of humor. We each contributed our own kind of observations. I’m glad to have people look at and laugh at and respect and get some creative juice out of what we did by observing.”
― Bob Elliott
“I have seen what a laugh can do. It can transform almost unbearable tears into something bearable, even hopeful.”
― Bob Hope
“A sense of humor is good for you. Have you ever heard of a laughing hyena with heart burn?”
― Bob Hope
“People with a sense of humor tend to be less egocentric and more realistic in their view of the world and more humble in moments of success and less defeated in times of travail.”
― Bob Newhart
“I think that what comes through in Chicago humor is the affection. Even though you’re poking fun at someone or something, there’s still an affection for it.”
― Bob Newhart
“The schizophrenic has no sense of humor. His world is a constantly daunting, unfriendly place.”
― Bob Newhart
“What you see on stage is pretty much the way I am… a dry sense of humor.”
― Bob Newhart
“Humor’s a weapon if you want to make it one.”
― Bob Newhart
“I think there’s a little confusion between humor and ‘gross’ passing for humor. That’s kind of regrettable, because they aren’t the same thing.”
― Bob Newhart
“I don’t know how many sacred cows there are today. I think there’s a little confusion between humor and gross passing for humor. That’s kind of regrettable.”
― Bob Newhart
“Humor is so important to the American scene throughout history.”
― Bob Newhart
“I make fun of situations and try and find the humor in things, but it’s never at the expense of the other guy.”
― Bob Uecker
“We take the shortest route to the puck and arrive in ill humor.”
― Bobby Clarke
“John Lennon, who was a good friend of mine, he had one of the best senses of humor of any human being. And Keith Richards, fantastic sense of humor. They were smart, sharp. They had their own thoughts on matters.”
― Bobby Keys
“And I would be the first to admit that probably, in a lot of press conferences over the time that I have been in coaching, indulging my own sense of humor at press conferences has not been greatly to my benefit.”
― Bobby Knight
“I don’t know if I realized that I was funny, but I realized how healing and important humor was in my childhood.”
― Bonnie Hunt
“Humor is very healing.”
― Bonnie Hunt
“I’m happy to say that at 62, I think I’ve reached that point where stuff doesn’t bother me as much, and my gratitude level has gone way up, especially having gone through the loss that I’ve had, and losing so many of the great artists that I was close to. They taught me how to see it with a grain of salt and a lot of humor and perspective.”
― Bonnie Raitt
“I try to bring it across on my record, in my dress, in what I do and what I say because to me humor is important. You should have a dose of that and I guess giving it is what I’m here for.”
― Bootsy Collins
“Humor is healing.”
― Brad Garrett
“I defuse everything I can with it. Humor is such a great shield.”
― Brad Paisley
“My wife has a good sense of humor, and instead of calling me psychic with my novels, she simply refers to me as being ‘psycho.’ That’s because multiple things in my books have come true.”
― Brad Thor
“I think great humor lies in playing the truth of a situation.”
― Brendan Coyle
“I think great humor lies in playing the truth of a situation. I see myself as a performer and that applies to a Greek drama or a modern comedy.”
― Brendan Coyle
“My life is part humor, part roses, part thorns.”
― Bret Michaels
“Without mincing words or really embellishing anything… I consider Mike Alsbury the renaissance man. He could do it all. He was an engineer. He was a pilot. He worked well with others. He had a great sense of humor. I never heard him raise his voice or lose his cool.”
― Brian Binnie
“I believe that singing is the key to long life, a good figure, a stable temperament, increased intelligence, new friends, super self-confidence, heightened sexual attractiveness, and a better sense of humor.”
― Brian Eno
“You’re gonna lose looks when it comes with age, but if you have that sense of humor, it will always keep things great in a relationship.”
― Brie Bella
“Comedy is so hard to do, so it was very cool to do dead pan humor.”
― Brittany Daniel
“I like an English sense of humor: dry, dirty, a little bit off. That’s kind of my taste.”
― Brooklyn Decker
“I think humor is used a lot of the time to keep people from getting too close. Humor side-steps and shifts the meaning.”
― Bruce Nauman
“Mixing humor and politics is something that works.”
― Bryan Cranston
“What we’re doing is fun – if you have any sense of humor at all!”
― Calvin Klein
“With humor, it’s so subjective that trying to think of what the ideal reader would think would drive you crazy.”
― Calvin Trillin
“There’s always a source for humor.”
― Calvin Trillin
“I’m not sure if it’s easier to address tough themes through humor, but I do think it’s more fun and makes such themes easier to digest for the reader.”
― Camille Perri
“In every interview, when they would ask me who should be a judge, I would always say Harry Connick, Jr., so I think I had something to do with him becoming a judge! He has a blunt, dry sense of humor. You never know if he’s joking or not, and I think that’s going to catch a lot of people by surprise.”
― Candice Glover
“Humor can be an incredible, lacerating and effective weapon.”
― Carl Hiaasen
“My books are shelved in different places, depending on the bookstore. Sometimes they can be found in the Mystery section, sometimes in the Humor department, and occasionally even in the Literature aisle, which is somewhat astounding.”
― Carl Hiaasen
“Humor can be an incredible lacerating and effective weapon. And that is the way I use it.”
― Carl Hiaasen
“’Wait, Wait’ has been great. The humor is there, and we get to do a lot of action.”
― Carl Kasell
“I can’t live without a sense of humor. I need to be laughing and entertained at all times.”
― Carlos Ponce
“I want someone who can keep me on my toes, has a good sense of humor and a good heart.”
― Carmen Electra
“People who know me know I have a sense of humor that can really push the envelope.”
― Carmen Electra
“I manage through a sense of humor. We all work hard, and work has to be a really interesting, fun place. And that has to start at the top.”
― Carol Bartz
“Everybody I know who is funny, it’s in them. You can teach timing, or some people are able to tell a joke, though I don’t like to tell jokes. But I think you have to be born with a sense of humor and a sense of timing.”
― Carol Burnett
“My mother was very funny. My dad had a great sense of humor. My grandmother, too.”
― Carol Burnett
“I think hip-hop does a very good job of infusing comedy and humor and wit into music, a lot more than other genres.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“With Portlandia, I don’t think our intention is always to find something funny. Sometimes the humor comes from taking something really seriously. We’re okay with making somebody feel uncomfortable or uneasy.”
― Carrie Brownstein
“What I wrote all the time when I was a kid – I don’t want to call it ‘poetry,’ because it wasn’t poetry. I was not that kind of a writer. I was a rhymer. I was a fan of Dorothy Parker’s, so maybe I wrote poetry to that extent, but my main focus was the humor of it, and word construction, and the slant. Your words, it’s a very powerful experience.”
― Carrie Fisher
“Going to AA helped me to see that there were other people who had problems that had found a way to talk about them and find relief and humor through that.”
― Carrie Fisher
“Back in 2004, Kellie Overbey handed me her play ‘Girl Talk’ to read. I fell in love with her brutally delicious humor and the fearlessly deft way in which she drew her characters. They jumped off the page and begged me to give them a space in which to stomp around.”
― Carrie Preston
“Any film which views the darker side of life, which is death with a sense of humor, is very much to my taste.”
― Carter Burwell
“If I can’t see the humor in it, how am I going to be funny?”
― Casey Affleck
“Honestly, I like someone who is really grounded, super sweet, honest. I need them to have a sense of humor. I need them to laugh at what’s funny, I need them to get jokes and be funny and be witty and sarcastic.”
― Casper Smart
“I’ve always littered my songs with jokes. You might need to dig a little deeper to find the humor, but I would totally object to being some kind of distraught personality. I’ve never tried to attach myself to that.”
― Cass McCombs
“A woman has to be intelligent, have charm, a sense of humor, and be kind. It’s the same qualities I require from a man.”
― Catherine Deneuve
“To this day, I’ve found that it doesn’t matter what a guy looks like if he’s really funny. His sense of humor makes him attractive. On the other hand, you don’t hear men saying, ‘No she’s not pretty, but is she ever funny!’”
― Catherine O’Hara
“I think everyone is born with humor, but your life can beat it out of you, sadly, or you can be lucky enough to grow up in it.”
― Catherine O’Hara
“I think the best dramatic actors know how to tap into their character’s humor.”
― Catherine O’Hara
“When I’ve traveled to London and Ireland, people don’t seem to take themselves so seriously, and it’s not just having a sense of humor about what’s around you but having a sense of humor about yourself, and that’s the healthiest sense of humor.”
― Catherine O’Hara
“I’m a prankster with a Monty Python sense of humor that somehow gets misrepresented in those tacky supermarket publications as bratty, snotty, and rude.”
― Catherine Oxenberg
“Cathy was the first widely syndicated humor strip created by a woman. The strip was pretty revolutionary at the time not only because it starred a female, but also because it was so emotionally honest about all the conflicting feelings many women had in 1976.”
― Cathy Guisewite
“I’m lucky that my real-life Mom has both a great sense of humor about herself and an amazing ability to slip into complete denial if the subject matter gets a little too close to home.”
― Cathy Guisewite
“I’m drawn to the unconventional because I’ve been drawn unconventionally. I believe that I’m supposed to topple over these false images of what’s idealistically beautiful. Because, of course, these intangible qualities are very attractive to women. Sincerity. Sense of humor. Success.”
― CeeLo Green
“Writing humor is not something every single person can do.”
― Celia Rivenbark
“I just think we need to have a little sense of humor about yourself and just live and learn, take some chances.”
― Cesaro
“Jazz can be so serious, no sense of humor.”
― Chad Smith
“The people I mixed with in Monaco didn’t relate to my South African mentality or humor… Although I have met some wonderful people since I’ve been living in Monaco, I regard them all as acquaintances. I only have two people I consider friends here.”
― Charlene, Princess of Monaco
“The thing that I fear discriminating against is humor and truth.”
― Charles Bukowski
“A joke’s a very serious thing.”
― Charles Churchill
“Good acting is thinking in front of the camera. I just do that and apply a sense of humor to it. You have to trust the audience to get it.”
― Charles Grodin
“I am often the brunt of my own humor.”
― Charles R. Swindoll
“A day without laughter is a day wasted.”
― Charlie Chaplin
“My humor isn’t meant to be mean or hurt anyone. But it’s to make them uncomfortable and laugh. I like making people feel a different range of emotions. I like to make people a bit confused.”
― Charlyne Yi
“Anyone who’s married to Mariah Carey – I’m pretty sure – doesn’t have a great sense of humor. I mean, let’s be honest: she’s ridiculous. What is her game plan?”
― Chelsea Handler
“I was a little shocked at how adult some of the humor was, because I was never that into animation before and when I watched ‘Shrek’ I really laughed out loud.”
― Cheryl Hines
“I come from a much freer kind of performance thing, where I rely on my own improv and my own sense of humor.”
― Chevy Chase
“Let’s not call physical comedy falling down and pratfalls. All humor is physical, no matter how you dish it out. It’s timing, like a dancer or an athlete would have.”
― Chevy Chase
“A laugh is a surprise. And all humor is physical. I was always athletic, so that came naturally to me.”
― Chevy Chase
“I’ve always had a crazy sense of humor. So the ballet probably wouldn’t have been enough for me. I had to clown around a little bit more.”
― Chita Rivera
“I like a very dry wit, not the big kind of humor like Robin Williams. I don’t think I’m capable of that.”
― Chris Cooper
“Set your compass to beauty, humor, and grief; stay the course no matter what, and I’ll support you with everything I’ve got.”
― Chris Jordan
“Religious humor is not really my area, so I probably wouldn’t do anything about that, or politics or something.”
― Chris Lilley
“Whenever I’ve had a wig fall off, I’ve just played it off like I meant it to happen. Just keep a good sense of humor about it.”
― Chris March
“A lot of celebrities have a sense of humor, and combined with an outrageous event, sometimes the sky’s the limit!”
― Chris March
“A sense of humor is great – it goes a long, long way in a marriage.”
― Chris Rock
“I thought my family was really funny. Everybody in my family was funny. My mom and dad both have great senses of humor and really saw the funny in stuff, so I think that’s probably where it came from. I always try to see the funny in things.”
― Christine Ebersole
“Sense of humor. A girl who doesn’t take themselves too seriously. And someone who is spontaneous. They’re the three things for me that really attract me to a girl.”
― Christopher Egan
“You know, ‘Jake 2.0’ had some funny things in it; I mean, I needed my sense of humor to do that part.”
― Christopher Gorham
“Certainly, anyone whom I’ve witnessed, who has gone through something horrible and life-changing, has a sense of ironic humor, or an ability to look at the peculiarities of the world and find humor in it.”
― Christopher Heyerdahl
“I don’t think it’s possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor.”
― Christopher Hitchens
“Uncle Fester always intrigued me. I certainly always enjoyed his kind of humor. He’s just full of mischief in a kind of macabre way. I don’t see anything twisted about it. It’s sort of ridiculous and wacky. It’s sort of fun.”
― Christopher Lloyd
“My fans have great senses of humor and eat too much chocolate.”
― Christopher Moore
“Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs.”
― Christopher Morley
“My first draft of Marvel Knights ‘Black Panther’ was not funny at all. They smartly rejected the entire script and counseled me to inject liberal doses of humor into very serious subject matter.”
― Christopher Priest
“In a way, a lot of my humor comes from presenting things that are dramatic or shocking and then people not having socially appropriate responses, having people denying the drama by failing to react to it, and that’s a really classic form of humor.”
― Chuck Palahniuk
“Hope for the best, survive the worst, find humor wherever you can.”
― Claire Scovell LaZebnik
“Humor can prove to be the conversational lubricant you need to remove the tension from the most unpleasant management- and accountability-related conversations.”
― Clay Clark
“A sense of humor is the ability to understand a joke – and that the joke is oneself.”
― Clifton Fadiman
“Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.”
― Clive James
“I will say that as I get older and calmer and quieter in my own self, the one quality in a woman that I find more and more attractive is kindness. A sense of adventure and humor is important too, but I truly find kindness and consideration for others to be the most attractive thing in anyone.”
― Colin Farrell
“I always thought the biggest failing of Americans was their lack of irony. They are very serious there! Naturally, there are exceptions… the Jewish, Italian, and Irish humor of the East Coast.”
― Colin Firth
“Whatever I did, I always gravitated toward trying to be funny. If I was with friends, we were joking around. If I wrote for the newspaper, it would be a humor column. If I acted, I wanted to do comedy.”
― Colin Jost
“Everybody’s got a different sense of humor. It’s just different styles.”
― Colin Quinn
“For the most part, comedians are pretty friendly with each other. They always say they badmouth each other, but most of the time, they’re friends. We’re the only ones that can really stand our type of humor.”
― Colin Quinn
“I suppose I look for humor in most situations because it humanizes things; it makes a character much more three-dimensional if there’s some kind of humor. Not necessarily laugh-out-loud type of stuff, just a sense that there is a humorous edge to things. I do like that.”
― Colm Meaney
“I love doing comedy. You don’t get many good comedy scripts. They’re rare. But, I do love playing comedy. Even in drama, I like to try to find the humor because I think it’s very human.”
― Colm Meaney
“I can’t fall apart every time I mention that my mother’s gone. I actually laugh about stories or things or situations. Of course there’s a wound that will never be patched up, but I approach it with humor. Of course, I don’t overlook it and go straight for the humor, but I think we have to have humor to move forward.”
― Colman Domingo
“There’s something about Southern women that is so unique yet so universal. Strong southern women are allowed to be soft and feminine and have a sense of humor. But what I love about Southern women in particular is their universality.”
― Connie Britton
“I think that sense of humor is important in marriage. A sense of humor gets people through marriage.”
― Connie Britton
“The funniest women I’ve known are Southern. It is such a vital way to get what you want. Charm and grace and a sense of humor will take you a long way.”
― Connie Britton
“In many ways, the South can be very traditional and confining. And what is interesting to me is how women find their way around it. Those obstacles create an amazing sense of humor, of fun, and, ultimately, of integrity. The fiercest and savviest women I have ever known are the women I grew up with.”
― Connie Britton
“We have a certain warped sense of humor in Scandinavia, and that is what comes across in the choices in a lot of our movies.”
― Connie Nielsen
“I was one of those kids who moved around a lot, but in every town I ever lived in, there was always that after-midnight horror show. It was hosted by Elvira when I lived in L.A. There were other ones. I can’t remember the rest of them. They were always able to pull out the sense of humor in the movie.”
― Conrad Vernon
“I think, in our darkest moments, you have to find the humor, and you have to find the lightness.”
― Corey Hawkins
“A sense of humor is important. I’m always attracted to a girl with confidence. In terms of looks, I don’t have a type. I think a lot of girls think that they have to be super-thin, to meet the Hollywood image, but I think a girl who is voluptuous is very beautiful.”
― Corey Sevier
“A sense of humor is important. I’m always attracted to a girl with confidence. In terms of looks, I don’t have a type.”
― Corey Sevier
“A lot of my humor does come from anger. It’s like, you’re not gonna pull one over on me – which is pretty much my motto anyways.”
― Courteney Cox
“I just am a snob when it comes to humor.”
― Courteney Cox
“I realized women and humor were linked very closely.”
― Craig Ferguson
“However, frat-boy humor is funny and it always will be.”
― Craig Kilborn
“In business, there are times when you disagree, and sometimes it turns out that you’re just plain wrong. Humor takes away tension and helps you realize you’re wrong.”
― Craig Newmark
“I think fans are going to get everything you’d expect from ‘The Office’, from awkwardness, to a lot of humor and heart.”
― Craig Robinson
“Reilly Brown is a master of balancing action, humor, and extreme violence, and his character designs for some of the alien races and technology that we encounter is just amazing.”
― Cullen Bunn
“Humor, humility, and, of course, honesty, all are qualities that work in public and cultural diplomacy.”
― Cynthia P. Schneider
“It is quite true, as some poets said, that the God who created man must have had a sinister sense of humor, creating him a reasonable being, yet forcing him to take this ridiculous posture, and driving him with blind craving for this ridiculous performance.”
― D. H. Lawrence
“But it was this tough little character part that I was playing, a very funny little guy that I invented over a weekend, because I realized I was not contributing to the humor of this thing. And I had to do something.”
― Dabney Coleman
“I think God has got a sense of humor. I really do.”
― Dabo Swinney
“Leonard Cohen has a way with words and with humor that remind me to lighten up, which I appreciate very much.”
― Damien Rice
“And for my family, comedically, that was the key to a lot of the humor.”
― Damon Wayans
“Bands from Akron have a sense of humor and don’t tend to take themselves too seriously.”
― Dan Auerbach
“The humor is essentially dark for a cartoon and sophisticated. But at the same time, being a cartoon gives the writers more freedom than in a normal sitcom. It always pushes the line that, despite human failings, the Simpsons are really decent people.”
― Dan Castellaneta
“I tend to like dry humor.”
― Dan Scanlon
“It’s odd how violence and humor so often go together, isn’t it?”
― Dan Simmons
“I tried to go out for theater or theater arts, but I was too scared or too intimidated. But I had a lot of friends on the cross country team that had great senses of humor.”
― Dana Carvey
“My fam is just a regular family. But all of them have great senses of humor.”
― Dane Cook
“You probably found ‘How to Survive a Robot Uprising’ in the humor section. Let’s just hope that is where it belongs.”
― Daniel H. Wilson
“One thing I would say is real cops have real gallows senses of humor and make incredibly funny and inappropriate jokes in the presence of dead people all the time.”
― Daniel J. Goor
“My experience growing up in London and growing up in a working class background is that when people are down and out, that’s when they’re probably the funniest. They have to be. That’s what they do to cope, to find joy, ’cause they don’t feel the joy inside. Or they use humor to keep people out.”
― Daniel Kaluuya
“Some people don’t have a sense of humor.”
― Daniel Lyons
“Humor is always more interesting when it comes from someone who’s had more than, like, five experiences.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg
“One of the things that would be great is to some day have so many women comedy writers that we wouldn’t say there’s just one type of female humor. There’s lots.”
― Daniel Mallory Ortberg
“Texas humor and Southern humor are pretty similar.”
― Daniel Woodrell
“As I understand from the real military personnel who I’ve had the opportunity to speak to over the last few years, humor is very much used to diffuse stress. I think that if they were to keep it as serious as the situations often are, there would be a lot more nervous breakdowns.”
― Daniela Ruah
“I chose to stylize ‘Among Friends’ and add a dark comedic element because I didn’t want to get pigeonholed as a genre director. I have a pretty dark sense of humor and knew that in order to get distribution, I had to do something in the genre for my first time out.”
― Danielle Harris
“I find that people find a way out of misery through humor and it’s humor that’s often unacceptable to people who are not in quite such a state of misery.”
― Danny Boyle
“Confidence and a good sense of humor can usually win a chick over.”
― Danny McBride
“When I did ‘Sex and the City,’ it was like, ‘Let’s do a comedy where the humor is not coming from innuendo but from the a truthful place. This is a show where we’re going to be able to say and do what we want.’”
― Darren Star
“I’ve got a sense of humor. I’m a funny guy.”
― Daryl Hall
“A book without potty humor is like a banana split without hot fudge. It can still be good, I suppose, but you kinda get the feeling that something is missing.”
― Dav Pilkey
“It used to take me forever to read and comprehend stuff, so I decided not to make the ‘Captain Underpants’ books too challenging. Don’t get me wrong – the humor and ideas are often sophisticated – but the books aren’t hard to read. I wanted kids who hate reading to find these books irresistible.”
― Dav Pilkey
“My brand of humor is trying to play the situation as real as possible because I’m not the type of guy who is a joke a minute.”
― Dave Franco
“I guess I’ve kind of recognized what my worth is and what my specific brand of humor is. And that’s not necessarily being the guy who’s super witty and saying a joke every second. I’m the guy who you throw in a bizarre scenario, and I’ll play it as real as possible.”
― Dave Franco
“I’m not 17 anymore. I still have some of the same sort of anger, but I have a sense of humor about it… a sense of being constructive with that anger.”
― Dave Pirner
“As I get older, my sense of humor is my biggest asset.”
― David Alan Grier
“Ontologically, chocolate raises profoundly disturbing questions: Does not chocolate offer natural revelation of the goodness of the Creator just as chilies disclose a divine sense of humor? Is the human born with an innate longing for chocolate? Does the notion of chocolate preclude the concept of free will?”
― David Augsburger
“’The Sopranos’ is filled with really retrograde humor. Bathroom humor, falls, stupid puns, bad jokes – infantile, adolescent stuff, but it makes me laugh.”
― David Chase
“I think that there’s always a time to be tongue-in-cheek, and there’s always time for humor, but there’s a time to be serious and a time for emotional content.”
― David Draiman
“There are certain things I learned when I first started learning about acting, to try and place the character physically and emotionally. And the way you place them emotionally is often with humor.”
― David Duchovny
“Sometimes in the most tragic situation, something just profoundly funny happens.”
― David Hyde Pierce
“I’m a big fan of independent girls who are strong-willed, vocal in their opinions, and have a sense of humor.”
― David Lambert
“Absurdity is what I like most in life, and there’s humor in struggling in ignorance. If you saw a man repeatedly running into a wall until he was a bloody pulp, after a while it would make you laugh because it becomes absurd.”
― David Lynch
“Humor is very interesting to me. My films are not comedies, but there’s comedy in them from time to time, absurdities, just like in real life.”
― David Lynch
“On April 3, 2014, Jane Goodall turned 80. The iconic blond ponytail has gone gray, but the sparkle of intelligence, sly humor, and fierce dedication still shines from her hazel eyes.”
― David Quammen
“I’m not sure. But that bless-his/her-heart kind of melancholic humor is among my favorite things in the world. I guess it exposes a kind of humanity – or that’s the hope, at least – a kind of grudging respect for human frailty. Unless it’s actually kicking human frailty while it’s down – I’m not sure.”
― David Rakoff
“Good humor isn’t a trait of character, it is an art which requires practice.”
― David Seabury
“When I look at a lot of older stuff that I’ve written, I think one sign of amateur humor writing is when you see people trying too hard.”
― David Sedaris
“The humor section is the last place an author wants to be. They put your stuff next to collections of Cathy cartoons.”
― David Sedaris
“I don’t really dissect comedy. Nothing kills off humor more than overanalyzing it.”
― David Steinberg
“I like humor.”
― David Yates
“I think up until the point when we started in the business, which was in the early ’70s, most of the humor was political. The smart humor was political satire.”
― David Zucker
“The thing I liked most about ‘Lois & Clark,’ we were a fun show. Some of the later ‘Superman’ stuff is so dark, but I prefer ‘Superman’ to be a character of light and hope. I prefer the lighter romance and humor.”
― Dean Cain
“I like to deal with EVERY aspect of our condition, and that means terror and humor in equal mix. Some books have more room for humor than others.”
― Dean Koontz
“I’ve learned to have a sense of humor about myself. Lord knows everyone else does!”
― Debbie Gibson
“I’d love to do a comedy – something where a character has to use humor to navigate the absurdities of life.”
― Debra Granik
“Having a sense of humor has served me more than it has hurt me – just in the sense that it has allowed me to keep my sanity.”
― Dee Dee Myers
“Through the years, I have been overwhelmed by the number of people who have shared how much they relate to my ‘Sordid Lives’ family, and how many gay men and women used it to come out to their conservative families through the humor of the film.”
― Del Shores
“I think it’s a brilliant tool to have, not only to have a sense of humor, but to be able to use humor to help one navigate life, and I tend not to be that type of person. I wish I were.”
― Delroy Lindo
“I’ll do humor about myself, I’ll poke fun and everything, but that’s me and I can do it to me. I think it’s cruel to do it to somebody else.”
― Delta Burke
“My dad was very much a John Wayne kind of guy, but he was also a great guy, great sense of humor, a real dedicated dad. I don’t think he ever missed a hockey game I was in.”
― Denis Leary
“I’m really happy I went to a Catholic school because a lot of the repressive tactics they use make for great senses of humor.”
― Denis Leary
“Sometimes you can take those dramatic roles and maybe interject a little humor into them, and I think the reverse also works.”
― Dennis Farina
“One has to develop a sense of humor to cope.”
― Diane English
“I failed to fulfill what should have been an interesting role. I couldn’t take their formula and bring what I had, my humor, my ideas, and make it my own.”
― Dianne Wiest
“I’m sure I’ve all but lost friends by maintaining that, despite their love for it, I always saw Stanley Kramer’s ‘It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World’ as more of an exercise in anti-comedy than humor.”
― Dick Cavett
“Humor is always based on a modicum of truth. Have you ever heard a joke about a father-in-law?”
― Dick Clark
“I make jokes because humor is the greatest healing factor that there is.”
― Dick Dale
“Bob Hope, like Mark Twain, had a sense of humor that was uniquely American, and like Twain, we’ll likely not see another like him.”
― Dick Van Dyke
“When you’re in Hollywood, you get sort of jaded about what you think the sense of humor of Hollywood is supposed to be, so you can’t think outside the box.”
― Diedrich Bader
“If you look at the game and everything, it’s not quite like looking at an animated film, because that’s total character. This, this is really movement, but it’s got funny little things if you look for the humor. They’re actually getting to the character.”
― Don Bluth
“A humorist is a person who feels bad, but who feels good about it.”
― Don Herold
“You can’t study comedy; it’s within you. It’s a personality. My humor is an attitude.”
― Don Rickles
“Political correctness? In my humor, I never talk about politics. I was never much into all that.”
― Don Rickles
“Half the battle is that people have to like you before you say one joke, one bit of humor.”
― Don Rickles
“Among my friends, I’m not a little Boy Scout, and they love my humor, thank God.”
― Don Rickles
“The similarity between my music and The Beatles’ music is it has within it a very positive quality. It’s woven with humor.”
― Donovan
“Those who knew Lincoln described him as an extraordinarily funny man. Humor was an essential aspect of his temperament. He laughed, he explained, so he did not weep.”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin
“Humor is imperative, more important than food. You have a choice when someone dies. You can lie down or get back into life. Do something for someone else.”
― Doris Roberts
“I think I’ve learned that if you want to be successful, you have to tell your story honestly and from your heart – and I think a healthy sense of humor doesn’t hurt either.”
― Dorothea Benton Frank
“A pun is the lowest form of humor, unless you thought of it yourself.”
― Doug Larson
“When we go to see comedians or funny movies, they don’t address the wall behind them; they face us. This is why a game’s first job is to entertain through gameplay and secondarily through humor, drama, or other traditional entertainment devices. The humor has to be a gentleman. I mean, it needs to be squeezed in around the game.”
― Doug TenNapel
“From there to here, and here to there, funny things are everywhere.”
― Dr. Seuss
“My sense of humor often gets me in trouble.”
― Duncan Jones
“I have a sense of humor, and sometimes it gets me into trouble.”
― Duncan Jones
“While it is true that Frank had a great sense of humor, he was also very serious about composing music. In reality there are only a handful of skilled players who can play his most complex pieces. It takes a lot of patience to learn and requires a fantastic memory.”
― Dweezil Zappa
“When a chick has a sense of humor, there’s nothing more attractive.”
― Dylan O’Brien
“Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.”
― E. B. White
“Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor.”
― E. B. White
“The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.”
― e. e. cummings
“I like humor: the sort of gentle humor that points out human foibles.”
― Ed Greenwood
“Try to find someone with a sense of humor. That’s an important thing to have because when you get into an argument, one of the best ways to diffuse it is to be funny. You don’t want to hide away from a point, because some points are serious, but you’d rather have a discussion that was a discussion, rather than an argument.”
― Ed Sheeran
“I want to prove to the skeptics that I’m not a clown. I’m very serious about what I do. I want to be a good ski jumper who has a sense of humor.”
― Eddie the Eagle
“It never seems to occur to some people, that, like beauty, a sense of humor may sometimes be fatal.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs
“There’s not too much Edge in Adam Copeland, but there’s a little bit of my sarcasm and my sense of humor, I guess, but I’m not a sleazy, raving maniac like the character of Edge could be.”
― Edge
“Good planning is important. I’ve also regarded a sense of humor as one of the most important things on a big expedition. When you’re in a difficult or dangerous situation, or when you’re depressed about the chances of success, someone who can make you laugh eases the tension.”
― Edmund Hillary
“I have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humor.”
― Edward Albee
“Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.”
― Edward de Bono
“It has always surprised me how little attention philosophers have paid to humor, since it is a more significant process of mind than reason. Reason can only sort out perceptions, but the humor process is involved in changing them.”
― Edward de Bono
“It’s always amazed me how little attention philosophers, psychologists, or anyone else actually has paid to humor.”
― Edward de Bono
“Humor is probably the most significant characteristics of the human mind. Far more significant than reason. In fact, reason is actually a very cheap commodity.”
― Edward de Bono
“’Northern Exposure.’ I loved that show; I loved the way it was able to have episodes where somebody finds a woolly mammoth, he calls the museum in New York, they send a guy out, and the mammoth’s gone because someone ate it. To me, that was everything I ever wanted to do. That show mixed emotion, humor and the surreal all at once.”
― Edward Kitsis
“People who have any kind of illness use humor as a type of coping.”
― Edward Zwick
“I like guys who have a plan or a dream. A good sense of humor is also a must. I can be weird with my humor and say things that are random. You need to understand that I’m really goofy and go with it.”
― Edy Ganem
“I love being Latina. I love our values, the way we’re so in touch with others, our dark humor, how fun we are, how relaxed we are. I love how hard working, independent, and ambitious we are.”
― Eiza Gonzalez
“The people in New York – their humor is on a level that goes, uh, very deep, you know?”
― Elaine Stritch
“I compare Stephen Sondheim with humor, because humor is unanalyzable. You can’t analyze humor. You just have to get through it.”
― Elaine Stritch
“I realized over the years if I’m writing about humor, irony, satire, I much prefer to do that in English. And if there is sorrow, melancholy, longing, I much prefer to do that in Turkish. Each language has its own strength to me, and I feel connected and attached to both Turkish and English. I dream in more than one language.”
― Elif Safak
“There’s such an odd, eclectic group of people that make up the town of Plymouth, New Hampshire. I don’t think I could avoid not coming out of there with a pretty good sense of humor.”
― Eliza Coupe
“I have such a respect for comedy. It’s a lot harder than doing drama, in my opinion; you have to have sort of an innate sense of humor. There are rules to comedy you can learn. But ultimately, it really does require a certain point of view on the world, and that really does appeal to me.”
― Elizabeth Banks
“If I could visit dead authors, I’d head right over to E. B. White, though I’m so in awe of him I’d probably just sit at his feet and weep. He’s the master of clarity, of understated humor, of palatable political conviction.”
― Elizabeth Berg
“I find life a mix of humor and pathos, and all my books reflect that to one degree or another.”
― Elizabeth Berg
“A strong sense of humor, a really awesome personality, and maturity is also really important in a boyfriend. I tend to only be attracted to older guys for that reason. I just love guys who have a really strong sense of who they are.”
― Elizabeth Gillies
“My two big date deal breakers are someone with no sense of humor and someone who chews badly. I will never be with someone who never laughs or someone who chews disgustingly, so if either of those things are detected on a date – it’s a total deal breaker.”
― Elizabeth Gillies
“You write the way you think about the world. My motto in times of trouble – and I’m speaking of life, not writing – is ‘no humor too black.’”
― Elizabeth McCracken
“Humor reminds you, when you’re flattened by sorrow, that you’re still human.”
― Elizabeth McCracken
“Short fiction is like low relief. And if your story has no humor in it, then you’re trying to look at something in the pitch dark. With the light of humor, it throws what you’re writing into relief so that you can actually see it.”
― Elizabeth McCracken
“There are two MFA programs here at the University of Texas, and I read on the jury of both of them. And it’s amazing to me how many really talented young writers seem to fear humor.”
― Elizabeth McCracken
“I’m a comedian, and I definitely see the humor in a lot of things. I am also sad a lot. I cry often and easily. I think you’re supposed to feel all kinds of things.”
― Ellen DeGeneres
“Roosevelt’s humor was broad, his manner friendly. Of wit there was little; of philosophy, none. What did he possess? Intuition, inspiration, love of adventure.”
― Emanuel Celler
“There is a collective as well as an individual humor inclining peoples to sadness or cheerfulness, making them see things in bright or somber lights. In fact, only society can pass a collective opinion on the value of human life; for this the individual is incompetent.”
― Emile Durkheim
“With Ricky Gervais, it’s all shades of wrong, it’s my kind of humor.”
― Emily Blunt
“I like very dry humor. I don’t like things that are over the top. I like subtlety. I like things that are nonchalant. I like characters that are sort of monotone and based in dark comedy.”
― Emily Rios
“Anybody with a sense of humor is going to put on my album and laugh from beginning to end.”
― Eminem
“Cameron Crowe can write dialogue and shoot it with warmth and humor like nobody else.”
― Emma McLaughlin
“I appreciate humor so much, but I’m actually not a funny girl.”
― Emmanuelle Chriqui
“Incongruity, they say, is one of the main ingredients of humor. Maybe it’s because everybody can feel superior to me. I honestly don’t know.”
― Emmett Kelly
“I think it’s important to have a sense of humor. You have to be able to laugh at yourself.”
― Engelbert Humperdinck
“The darker the film, the more vital everyone’s sense of humor is on set.”
― Eric Bana
“As an undergrad, I was the editor of the Yale humor magazine, and since then, I’ve published humor in the ‘New York Times’ and ‘Atlantic,’ among other places.”
― Eric Metaxas
“If you can understand the humor in the drawing part you’ll probably get the humor in the audio part.”
― Eric San
“Next to power without honor, the most dangerous thing in the world is power without humor.”
― Eric Sevareid
“Most of the time, the truth is ugly and in your face! My observational brand of humor is very much all in your face!”
― Erik Griffin
“In a girl I look for honesty above all, someone who I can carry on a conversation with, someone who has a good sense of humor, someone who’s true to herself, and to top it, someone who can get ready for a date in less than ten minutes.”
― Erik von Detten
“When I did stand-up at U.C.B., and I had a blog for a couple of years that started my writing career, ‘Totally Confident and Completely Insecure,’ it was the same kind of self-deprecating humor and stories about being out in L.A. and being treated like a loser at a hair salon because you are not famous.”
― Erin Foster
“Obviously, it’s the Lucille Balls of the world who helped make humor accessible to women and in a voice that women related to. I just wanted to continue that.”
― Erin Foster
“When you meet someone new who instantly gets you, your sense of humor and your attitudes and your worldview, even if theirs are different – and you get them in return. You both talk and talk and agree and laugh and nod and yes, yes, of course you should get another round of drinks.”
― Erin Morgenstern
“There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.”
― Erma Bombeck
“When humor goes, there goes civilization.”
― Erma Bombeck
“I grew up with SpongeBob – it came out in 1999, right before I turned 7. So it’s been a part of my life and all my friends’ lives and defined our humor, in a way.”
― Ethan Slater
“I want to be taken seriously as the type of musician that plays stuff like an electric rake. I mean, how seriously do you take someone like Spike Jones? They take him pretty seriously – a really good musician who made a great contribution in terms of humor, which is part of what I try to do too.”
― Eugene Chadbourne
“I’ll come out and say it because no one else will: French gross-out humor is the best. Particularly the illustrated variety.”
― Euny Hong
“I’ve never used my weight to get a laugh. That is, used my size as the subject for humor. You never saw me stuck in a door-way or stuck in a chair.”
― Fatty Arbuckle
“He was just trying to tease me – I knew that later – but he said he’d have to leave because it wasn’t fair to have anyone in the room who was going to make fun of what he had to say. He had a good sense of humor, really.”
― Fay Wray
“There are the horror fans that love the ‘Evil Dead’ because of the humor, but I’m sure it’s not all of them. Not all horror fans love ‘Evil Dead’ because of the humor, at least not me.”
― Fede Alvarez
“Get well cards have become so humorous that if you don’t get sick you’re missing half the fun.”
― Flip Wilson
“Things can be funny only when we are in fun. When we’re ‘dead earnest,’ humor is the only thing that is dead.”
― Flip Wilson
“I have my outlet for my humor through my characters, and I also have the intimacy of rapport with my fans that allows me to explain my philosophy and spirituality.”
― Flip Wilson
“You can’t pretend to be witty because wit is dry, subtle, lacerating, cynical, elitist, and risque – all impossible to fake. Humor, on the other hand, is broad, soothing, positive, inclusive, and smutty – to make sure everybody gets it. Pretending to be humorous is easy, and a great many people are doing it.”
― Florence King
“They don’t call him ‘No Drama Obama’ for nothing. He’s even worse than we thought because he has committed the ultimate American crime, worse than anything he has been accused of so far: He has no sense of humor.”
― Florence King
“I don’t have a very quick sense of humor.”
― Florenz Ziegfeld
“Life is just so much fun and so filled with humor.”
― Foster Friess
“Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.”
― Francis Bacon
“When humor can be made to alternate with melancholy, one has a success, but when the same things are funny and melancholic at the same time, it’s just wonderful.”
― Francois Truffaut
“One can never speak enough of the virtues, the dangers, the power of shared laughter.”
― Francoise Sagan
“I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in it.”
― Frank A. Clark
“Fox does the NFL a lot like they program the rest of the network. There’s sort of a locker room sense of humor that prevails. With ESPN, it’s more like a pat-you-on-the-back kind of comedy. I mean, they’ll all get on each other a little bit, but it’s never mean-spirited.”
― Frank Caliendo
“ESPN is all meat and potatoes. It’s pretty much scouting reports. There isn’t a great deal of humor, and when there is, it’s pretty sophomoric.”
― Frank Deford
“I think there are more good sportswriters doing more good sportswriting than ever before. But I also believe that the one thing that’s largely gone out is what made sport such fertile literary territory – the characters, the tales, the humor, the pain, what Hollywood calls ‘the arc.’”
― Frank Deford
“I think there’s something about the Irish experience – that we had to have a sense of humor or die.”
― Frank McCourt
“That’s what kept us going – a sense of absurdity, rather than humor.”
― Frank McCourt
“Men will confess to treason, murder, arson, false teeth, or a wig. How many of them will own up to a lack of humor?”
― Frank Moore Colby
“Wit is a weapon. Jokes are a masculine way of inflicting superiority. But humor is the pursuit of a gentle grin, usually in solitude.”
― Frank Muir
“I have no idea what a British sensibility or a British sense of humor is. I have no concept of what that is. I have no concept of what American sensibility is. I was born in Great Britain, but I was only there for six months, and we moved to Belgium, where I grew up.”
― Frank Oz
“A man’s man is respectful, he’s honorable, he’s loyal, he’s sensitive, he’s strong, he’s tough, he’s well-groomed, he has a sense of humor – and he takes care of himself and his lady.”
― Frank Vincent
“You have got to have a good sense of humor, you have got to be tough, and you have got to know how to dress.”
― Frank Vincent
“The overwhelming majority of Americans are possessed of two great qualities a sense of humor and a sense of proportion.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt
“All I know about humor is that I don’t know anything about it.”
― Fred Allen
“Gamer humor ranges all over the place. What it comes down to is taking a lot of what we see in gaming and we’re familiar with in gaming and being like, ‘OK, hold on, let’s re-examine this for a second. Isn’t this funny? Isn’t this strange? Isn’t this a little bit ridiculous?’ That’s where it is.”
― Freddie Wong
“It is characteristic of all deep human problems that they are not to be approached without some humor and some bewilderment.”
― Freeman Dyson
“I think anyone who behaves boorishly but without a good sense of humor is not as fun to watch.”
― Gaby Hoffmann
“I don’t feel any need to play the role of the clown. In my private life I take a break from humor.”
― Gad Elmaleh
“I try to cope with everything through humor.”
― Gail Porter
“In rough times, pathfinders rely on work, friends, humor and prayer. They develop a support network.”
― Gail Sheehy
“Humor has to surprise us; otherwise, it isn’t funny. It’s a death knell for a writer to be labeled a humorist because then it’s not a surprise anymore.”
― Garrison Keillor
“Humor is a wonderful way to deal with our suffering because if we can laugh at our troubles, we can feel better. Thich Nhat Hanh is a special man who has helped millions with their suffering with incredible technique. But he doesn’t know real suffering, because he has not dated as much as I have.”
― Garry Shandling
“Well, it’s a humor strip, so my first responsibility has always been to entertain the reader… But if, in addition, I can help move readers to thought and judgment about issues that concern me, so much the better.”
― Garry Trudeau
“Humor can inform and break down stigma, which is a huge issue in the military.”
― Garry Trudeau
“Without humor, I cannot go on and I doubt many of my readers would go on either. Humor is so important. I am here to have fun here with my work.”
― Gary Shteyngart
“Once anyone who has a sense of humor can do what they want, they want to do funny bits as much as possible.”
― Gavin McInnes
“Certainly my personality, my sense of humor, my outlook on life was informed by the experiences of my parents and the stories they shared with me.”
― Geddy Lee
“I grew up on EC comic books and ‘Tales From the Crypt,’ which were all loaded with humor, bad jokes, and puns. I can have that kind of fun and make these comic book movies but, at the same time, talk about things I want to talk about – whether it’s consumerism or the Bush administration or war.”
― George A. Romero
“There is a real affection for these human beings on these stage that O’Neill really had. Out of that affection comes a lot of humor, which is unexpected when you think of ‘The Iceman Cometh.’”
― George C. Wolfe
“I choose my actors well and get to know the quirks of their personalities – and, most of all, I share humor with them. Then I keep my eyes open when they rehearse and perform, because you never know where the next stimulation comes from.”
― George Cukor
“Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.”
― George Eliot
“In conversation, humor is worth more than wit and easiness more than knowledge.”
― George Herbert
“Women, as they grow older, rely more and more on cosmetics. Men, as they grow older, rely more and more on a sense of humor.”
― George Jean Nathan
“Ad agencies do all kinds of market research that ask people what they think they want, and instead, you should be creating things that you want. If you do something and you get it, the rest of the world will get it, too. Trust your own instincts, your own intellect, and your own sense of humor.”
― George Lois
“Humor is a powerful tool, and some of these politicians are so far out and easy to lampoon. They just provide such delicious opportunity.”
― George Takei
“W. P. Kinsella, who was born on a farm near Edmunton, Alberta, has earned wide recognition for his wild imagination and rash humor as a writer.”
― Gerald Vizenor
“The polls indicated that I was feisty, that I was tough, that I had a sense of humor, but they weren’t quite sure if they liked me and they didn’t know whether or not that I was sensitive.”
― Geraldine Ferraro
“Twitter is the place where I try to be more funny. And then I use Instagram just as my diary. I pull some jokes on there, but I think people have a better sense of humor on Twitter.”
― Gigi Hadid
“Food is sort of like the Jewish sense of humor, a defense mechanism. It is one of the things that helped the Jews survive through 2,000 years of an often very harsh Diaspora.”
― Gil Marks
“For me, I really love ‘Tim and Eric’ and ‘Dr. Steve Brule’ and a lot of the Adult Swim shows, so I like strange, weird, sometimes slightly upsetting humor.”
― Gillian Jacobs
“I call it predicament humor. You don’t do anything that cuts the star off at the knees or worse. You make him intelligent; you give him great ideas and great things to do.”
― Glen A. Larson
“Anyone who knows me, and most of my fans, know that I have a sense of humor.”
― Glenn Danzig
“Do feminists have a sense of humor? Yes.”
― Gloria Allred
“People ask if I feel pigeon-holed by always doing the same kind of humorous role. But my tool has always been humor because it’s the most entertaining way to put any ideology across, and it’s fun, and it’s positive, and it’s a healer. Laughter is God’s gift. I feel privileged to be able to do it.”
― Goldie Hawn
“I often have said that to be a college president, you need a thick skin, a good sense of humor, and nerves like sewer pipes.”
― Gordon Gee
“I tend to deal with most issues with humor… always have and always will.”
― Gordon Gee
“Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert. Those are the guys I look at who are telling me pretty much the truth. And they throw humor into it which makes it much more interesting to listen to.”
― Grace Slick
“In everything I write, I’m always striving to hit the right mix of light and darkness, humor and pain, fun and seriousness.”
― Greg van Eekhout
“As fandom grew more variegated, genzines reflected a broadening of interests, carrying personal columns of humor and reflection, science articles, amateur fiction, stylish gossip, and inevitably, thoughtful pieces on the future of fandom.”
― Gregory Benford
“Humor is reason gone mad.”
― Groucho Marx
“Puns are a form of humor with words.”
― Guillermo Cabrera Infante
“I don’t try to sanction other people’s joy in monsters. I mean, I think the fact is, humor, fantasy – you know, like fear, desire or laughter – create genres of their own: comedy, melodrama, or erotic films or horror films… The boundaries cannot be defined. It’s to each his own.”
― Guillermo del Toro
“I connect to humor really deeply, so I feel really comfortable just being in funny projects.”
― Guillermo Diaz
“Cynicism is humor in ill health.”
― H. G. Wells
“There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.”
― H. L. Mencken
“He used humor more effectively than any president since Abraham Lincoln. Reagan was not an especially warm person, but he appeared to be. Many people disliked his policies, but almost no one disliked him.”
― H. W. Brands
“Maintaining a sense of humor is key to getting people to also focus on the crises at hand.”
― Hailey Gates
“I’d like to explore the more abstract side of people’s minds, as opposed to the usual sitcom stuff. I don’t want to do the typical sitcom-type humor. I’d want to do stuff like go bowling with pineapples.”
― Harland Williams
“I grew up with Forrest J. Ackerman’s ‘Famous Monsters of Filmland’ along with a plethora of movie tomes and wanted to write about film with a sense of personality, passion, and humor.”
― Harry Knowles
“Any man who has had the job I’ve had and didn’t have a sense of humor wouldn’t still be here.”
― Harry S Truman
“You can find heroism everyday, like guys working terrible jobs because they’ve got to support their families. Or as far as humor, the things I see on the job, on the street, are far funnier than anything you’ll ever see on TV.”
― Harvey Pekar
“I’ve learned to start from a really sound argument, boil down the essence of what you’re trying to say, then build your humor around that, rather than starting with, ‘This sounds funny,’ and going from there.”
― Hasan Minhaj
“Putting a little time aside for clean fun and good humor is very necessary to relieve the tensions of our time.”
― Hattie McDaniel
“I think American guys tend to be a bit more forward, a bit more chatty and open than the Brits. The Brits seem to have a darker sense of humor, though I have met some Americans who have adopted bits of the British dry sense of humor as well.”
― Hayley Atwell
“Humor is really one of the hardest things to define, very hard. And it’s very ambiguous. You have it, or you don’t. You can’t attain it.”
― Heinrich Boll
“Humor in a relationship is so important. Many women will say that. Some say, ‘If they can make you laugh, it’s the sexiest thing on earth.’”
― Helen Mirren
“I like people with a good sense of humor, like Jennifer Aniston. She is amazing and is a great actress.”
― Helio Castroneves
“I’m looking at some comedic horror films because I have often been accused of being too dark. I’m not dark, not compared with ‘Saw’ or anything like that. So I’m looking at live-action horror films, but not slasher ones – ones that have humor and maybe some social satire.”
― Henry Selick
“A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It’s jolted by every pebble on the road.”
― Henry Ward Beecher
“Americans are pragmatic, relatively uncomplicated, hearty and given to broad humor.”
― Herb Caen
“Never say a humorous thing to a man who does not possess humor. He will always use it in evidence against you.”
― Herbert Beerbohm Tree
“I regard the writing of humor as a supreme artistic challenge.”
― Herman Wouk
“In the eighties, there was a huge shift in the humor of Japanese television. Up until then, the humor was garnered by people who said humorous things, but in the ’80s, it was garnered by people who were being laughed at while the audience watches and watches.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“There’s a tremendous amount of humor… in very unexpected places.”
― Holly Hunter
“I think that ‘Saving Grace’ is pretty funny. I think that the show and the woman have a pretty great sense of humor.”
― Holly Hunter
“My uncle worked in emergency wards dealing with people who came in with terrible injuries. He talked about the sketch shows they would put on to lighten the atmosphere. You often find this sense of grim humor in hospitals. The injuries people are suffering are ghastly. You have to laugh at something or you’d otherwise cry.”
― Honeysuckle Weeks
“I think one in five Americans has a disability of some sort. That’s 20% of the population, and yet we rarely ever see people with disabilities on-screen, and their stories and their resilience and their zest for life and their humor and their humanity.”
― Hong Chau
“Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he isn’t. A sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.”
― Horace Walpole
“I could not tread these perilous paths in safety, if I did not keep a saving sense of humor.”
― Horatio Nelson
“If you’re able to put humor into something, just like it happens in life, you might get away with it.”
― Howard Deutch
“I think the thrust of any child is to try to fit in and be part of it. And I can’t tell you how many times my humor, you know, what I thought was humor ended up making me the outsider. Like I’d be, I go, ‘It’s a joke.’ And they’d go, ‘Well, what was funny?’ And they just thought I was insane.”
― Howie Mandel
“The biggest void that people can have in their lives is a sense of humor. Spending your life with someone who doesn’t have that wouldn’t be palatable.”
― Howie Mandel
“Part of my humor is the fact that I love coming out of left field. I don’t want people to expect what is going to happen next.”
― Howie Mandel
“A sense of humor… is needed armor. Joy in one’s heart and some laughter on one’s lips is a sign that the person down deep has a pretty good grasp of life.”
― Hugh Sidey
“I have never believed much in luck, and my sense of humor has tended to walk on the dark side.”
― Hunter S. Thompson
“Just because I have a sense of humor and use bright colors, people always say it’s ‘camp.’ I’m just doing my thing. I think of it as art.”
― Hunx
“With reporting, if you work hard, you can usually pull something out. But writing humor doesn’t respond to working hard, necessarily. I mean, you could just sit there and look at the page all day and maybe something will come.”
― Ian Frazier
“Russian humor is to adapt or make some sense or nonsense out of the insanity of their lives.”
― Ian Frazier
“People in Russia adapt to misery by a deep, deep humor.”
― Ian Frazier
“I don’t have a disregard for my reader in humor pieces.”
― Ian Frazier
“I think what is important for things to be funny is if you the listener, or the reader, get a chance to supply the humor of it yourself.”
― Ian Frazier
“Writing humor for me is more like a watchful-ness. You have to watch. When you say something funny, or someone else does, it’s more like you wait for the piece.”
― Ian Frazier
“I think sometimes my humor is extremely dry, and a lot of times I would say things that I thought were very funny but… I have a reputation of – people think of me as a very fundamentalist, humorless fellow.”
― Ian MacKaye
“Our records, if you have a dark sense of humor, were funny, but our records weren’t about comedy. They were about protests, fantasy, confrontation and all that.”
― Ice Cube
“I have a really dark, rich, thick sense of humor.”
― Inga Muscio
“From an early age onward, it was said that ‘Ingmar has no sense of humor.’”
― Ingmar Bergman
“Humor is merely tragedy standing on its head with its pants torn.”
― Irvin S. Cobb
“Hateful words stand no chance against self-worth and a little of humor.”
― Iskra Lawrence
“Every black film feels like it’s Tyler Perry, and that just needs to stop. But people seem to slowly be looking for what else is out there – ‘Is there something else besides this type of humor?’ ‘I’m tired of seeing men in dresses.’”
― Issa Rae
“Who I was was not acceptable to black L.A. youth: the way I spoke and my sense of humor. Everybody else had relaxers and pressed hair. I wore my hair in an Afro puff. Nappy. The way I dressed. It was all about name brands at the time in L.A. I had no idea. All those things, I failed miserably at.”
― Issa Rae
“I hate to say it but I hate black humor. I feel like a Klan member saying it, but it’s just not funny.”
― Issa Rae
“A good actor is someone who knows how to take the part and make it real and make it honest and be effective in it. If it’s in a funny movie and, as long as they are cast in an appropriate way, humor will come from it.”
― Ivan Reitman
“I don’t think my sense of humor has changed at all; I was born with this, for better or for worse.”
― Ivan Reitman
“Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself – with a smile.”
― J. B. Priestley
“I loved Peter Sellers. I thought he was the perfect mix of physical comedy with out-of-the-box humor. I loved his tone; I loved his physicality; I loved everything about what he was doing as a comedic actor.”
― J. B. Smoove
“Writing a novel is one of those modern rites of passage, I think, that lead us from an innocent world of contentment, drunkenness, and good humor, to a state of chronic edginess and the perpetual scanning of bank statements.”
― J. G. Ballard
“One of my favorite things about ‘Star Trek’ wasn’t just the overt banter but the humor in that show about the relationships between the main characters and their reactions to the situations they would face; there was a lot of comedy in that show without ever breaking its reality.”
― J. J. Abrams
“In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.”
― J. Robert Oppenheimer
“Gags die, humor doesn’t.”
― Jack Benny
“Candidates should be extremely cautious in displaying a sense of humor. If he or she tells a joke with a point, there is almost certain to be some minority group offended.”
― Jack Germond
“I think luck is a great part of it because I think that the particular makeup of the person that you are attracted to, and that you fall in love with, is very important. Even down to that old bromide of a sense of humor and all of that.”
― Jack Lemmon
“The more I live, the more I think that humor is the saving sense.”
― Jacob Riis
“I’m a fan of, like, the Coen Brothers, with the darker humor in it.”
― Jacob Zachar
“The key to gallows humor is to make the joke, no matter how certain the gallows is.”
― James Adomian
“Sometimes an actor will stumble on the joke, and I’m right on them. Back it up before the audience hears the bad version of the joke, because humor is 90% surprise. If they know what’s coming, they won’t laugh as hard.”
― James Burrows
“I really love middle-grade. Middle-grade books have a little more of a magical, light-hearted feel. You can be a little bit more quirky, you can have a little more humor. It doesn’t get so dark and deep.”
― James Dashner
“The key to humor is often self-loathing or sarcasm. In a sense, that’s how self-loathing is made palatable.”
― James Gray
“Humor is the most precious gift I can give to my reader, a reminder that the world is not such a terribly serious place. There is more than video games and drugs and nuclear threats; there is laughter, and there is hope.”
― James Howe
“When I’m with other people who inspire my silliness or sense of humor, I’m funny. When I sit down to write, it’s hard not to be funny.”
― James Howe
“If you don’t have humor, you’re not going to make it. You’re going to be one of those people who walks around with your head about to explode.”
― James McBride
“Gallows humor is part of our coping mechanism. It’s part of our grief process. If we don’t know what else to do, we laugh. That’s a very real thing.”
― James Roday
“I don’t think you can define how you acquire your imagination any more than you can define why one person has a sense of humor and another doesn’t. But I certainly would lean to the side that says all those solitary hours of daydreaming were a kind of training for poetry.”
― James Tate
“Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.”
― James Thurber
“Humor is a serious thing. I like to think of it as one of our greatest earliest natural resources, which must be preserved at all cost.”
― James Thurber
“The nation that complacently and fearfully allows its artists and writers to become suspected rather than respected is no longer regarded as a nation possessed with humor or depth.”
― James Thurber
“Feature-length film comedy is harder to pull off than the episodic sitcom – it doesn’t have the same factory machinery up and running, teams of writers putting familiar characters through permutations – but that doesn’t explain the widening quality gap that makes movie humor look like a genetic defective.”
― James Wolcott
“Being a Hot Mom means being respected as a mom and a woman. And, the key to being a Hot Mom is having a sense of humor about yourself and all the crazy situations that arise.”
― Jami Gertz
“I do find the sibling connection endlessly fascinating, as I do all family dynamics. I like how siblings seem to create their own parentless mini-civilization within a family, one that has its own laws, myths, language, humor, its own loyalties and treacheries.”
― Jandy Nelson
“As a species, we would not have survived without humor.”
― Jane Hamilton
“I think it’s hilarious at 40 years old to bring out my roller skates from ‘Starlight Express.’ I find the humor and even the sadness in it hilarious and something to celebrate.”
― Jane Krakowski
“I think humor is such a personal thing, and you put a microphone in somebody’s face, they’re going to say something that offends somebody.”
― Jane Lynch
“I think that some books are more successful than others to certain readers. People who read my books for the humor, they’re going to love one book. People who read my books for the mystery, they might not like that book quite as much.”
― Janet Evanovich
“You can get through very serious and sometimes horrible and sometimes embarrassing and very awkward situations with humor. It gives us a way out.”
― Janet Evanovich
“We don’t appreciate the value of humor sometimes.”
― Janet Evanovich
“’Plum’s are probably the funniest, but all the books have their own degree of humor. But if you’re hooked into ‘Ranger,’ you’re reading it for the romance.”
― Janet Evanovich
“I always say I owe my sense of humor to ‘The Muppets’ because I didn’t necessarily know what was going on when I watched ‘The Muppet Show,’ and obviously, ‘Sesame Street’ was made just for me.”
― Janet Varney
“I was raised by a dad who has a fantastic sense of humor who raised me on ‘The Muppet Show,’ Steve Martin movies, and Woody Allen’s standup, and he really encouraged me to ham it up from an early age.”
― Janet Varney
“The thing about For Better or Worse is the only thing that made me an okay director for that is that I have a sense of humor, and it was supposed to be funny.”
― Jason Alexander
“My sense of humor lies a little closer to the middle.”
― Jason Bateman
“My family is pretty funny. My mother is British, so she’s got a very dry sense of humor. That’s where I got that from.”
― Jason Bateman
“But because it was able to balance that kind of humor with a sweet story and characters you really rooted for and also got across the girls’ point of view, I’ve heard nothing but great things from younger and older females as well.”
― Jason Biggs
“My father was an electrical engineer who worked at Westinghouse in Pittsburgh. When I was growing up, my mother wrote humor columns for the local paper. She was the Erma Bombeck of Murrysville, Pa.”
― Jason Kilar
“In Buddhism, they say attachment to anything only leads to suffering. So when we laugh, it’s our way of saying, ‘I’m unattached to that.’ You’re tickled by it, it makes your lobes do something on their own. So humor is very important to me. I always take that to the stage first.”
― Jason Mraz
“A sense of humor saves your life, and being able to make friends wherever you go.”
― Jason O’Mara
“Though many of Obsidian’s games have featured wry, sardonic humor, the developer has stuck to more serious fantasy and sci-fi themes.”
― Jason Schreier
“I love people who have a good sense of humor, tell a good story, tell a good joke.”
― Jason Statham
“All Shondaland shows have a level of intelligence, a level of humor, a level of pathos and human connection.”
― Jason Winston George
“So my humor, I’d say, comes from a mixture of lowbrow comedy shows and highbrow theater. It’s an interesting mix.”
― Jasper Fforde
“I wish there were more humor in my work than I see in it.”
― Jasper Johns
“I think there’s always room for humor, especially when you’re talking about really serious issues.”
― Jay Asher
“I thought I was going to be known for my humor. But then I had an idea for a story, which was absolutely not humorous. But, of course, that’s the one that sells and becomes big.”
― Jay Asher
“Sense of humor is important in life, not just in clothing. How boring to live a life in beige.”
― Jean Pigozzi
“It’s amazing how these little guys can say things that a mortal human could never get away with. There’s some sort of unspoken license… when outlandish things come out of an inanimate object, somehow it equals humor.”
― Jeff Dunham
“There’s some sort of unspoken license… when outlandish things come out of an inanimate object, somehow it equals humor.”
― Jeff Dunham
“We’re all screwed up. And the way Christians mess things up is we act like we’ve got it going on. And if we would just stay in that place of, ‘Hey, we’re all screwed up and but for the grace of God, none of us have a shot here.’ We need to have a sense of humor about it; that’s kind of the way I’ve always faced my comedy.”
― Jeff Foxworthy
“I like beautiful writing, pain, unexpected humor, and the message that, at the last second, people are going to be kind to each other. It almost doesn’t matter what the genre is.”
― Jeff Giles
“I thought that through the strip, I could vent my spleen and be funny at the same time. But when it comes to humor, there’s no substitute for reality and politicians.”
― Jeff MacNelly
“’Take Shelter’ is a tough movie because there’s no humor in it, so there’s really no way to judge how you’re doing – whether people are still with you or not.”
― Jeff Nichols
“Athletes tend to have less of a sense of humor than most people. They are heroes to so many. That might be part of it.”
― Jeff Ross
“Humor that is edgy is never squeaky clean.”
― Jeff Ross
“When I’d watch myself coaching, I’d say, ‘Man, I look bad,’ but I never felt I didn’t have a sense of humor with the team. Maybe I was too over-the-top serious.”
― Jeff Van Gundy
“I’m a Jewish son of Russian-Hungarian heritage parents. Humor was very important. My whole goal was to make my parents laugh. And my whole strategy as a young man was, if I could make them laugh, I could have enough time to figure out what to do next.”
― Jeffrey Tambor
“I think Damien Hirst is hilarious. And I think he’s a true artist. He’s not hilarious first; I think he is a real artist, and I also think he’s got an amazing sense of humor.”
― Jemima Kirke
“Humor’s an excellent way to make a point more palatable and/or relatable.”
― Jen Lancaster
“I’m a humor writer, so I don’t always present myself in the best light.”
― Jen Lancaster
“I wrote a show – just as a joke, actually – and called it ‘Bipolar, Bath, & Beyond,’ just to bring some humor to it. I wasn’t saying to myself that I’ll ‘come out’ with it – I didn’t think there was anything to ‘come out’ with – I was just writing another one-woman show about my life.”
― Jenifer Lewis
“I think shows that are completely dramatic are a lie. People use humor to cope. That is how we deal with things. In the darkest situations, there’s humor. And if you don’t show that, you’re not being true to real life.”
― Jenji Kohan
“OK, in all seriousness, I would say I couldn’t be in a relationship without equality, generosity, integrity, spirit, kindness and humor. And awesomeness.”
― Jennifer Aniston
“If you could choose one characteristic that would get you through life, choose a sense of humor.”
― Jennifer Jones
“If someone is genuine, compassionate and kind, that is a turn-on. A sense of humor is a huge turn on, and that goes hand in hand with intelligence.”
― Jennifer Nettles
“People who have very devastating lives sometimes have the most wild, avant-garde humor. It’s like when you’ve seen it all and been through it all, nothing is off-limits in a way.”
― Jenny Zhang
“I like telling stories with a sense of humor. But humor can also distance you from the subject you’re writing about. I’m interested in using humor as a portal to something a bit more serious.”
― Jens Lekman
“Any band that doesn’t have a sense of humor has a little bit of a problem.”
― Jens Lekman
“There are just certain things that turn my head. It may be a girl’s sense of humor, it may be her wit, or her belief system; it could be a lot of different things.”
― Jensen Ackles
“He has such a patronizing tone and manner, and such a sarcastic sense of humor. I found him rather brutal, a kind of elegant brutality which appealed. No, I think he came pretty much off the page.”
― Jeremy Northam
“In the ‘Hurt Locker’ there’s a lot of me in there, a sense of humor, a man of few words and a lot of action.”
― Jeremy Renner
“One thing I have that the majority of other designers don’t is humor. That’s distinctly my approach, and it was distinctly Franco Moschino’s, too.”
― Jeremy Scott
“Humor and comedy have always been the best way to deal with real life issues and just reality.”
― Jermaine Fowler
“Humor works, and it’s the best way to get attention without spending a lot of money.”
― Jerry Della Femina
“It’s self-effacing, it’s hard-luck, the shtetl stories. All those Coasters things are an amalgam of Yiddish and black humor.”
― Jerry Leiber
“So, I’m thinking of a name for a villain that has a sense of humor. I thought of ‘The Joker’ as a name, and as soon as I thought that, I associate it with the playing card, as my family had a tradition of champion playing; my brother was a contract champion bridge player. There were always cards around the house.”
― Jerry Robinson
“So once I thought of the villain with a sense of humor, I began to think of a name and the name “the Joker” immediately came to mind. There was the association with the Joker in the deck of cards, and I probably yelled literally, ‘Eureka!’ because I knew I had the name and the image at the same time.”
― Jerry Robinson
“Nobody enjoys the ‘little show about nothing’ humor more than me, but that is never the way I look at it.”
― Jerry Seinfeld
“A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself.”
― Jessamyn West
“Congratulations, you have a sense of humor. And to those who didn’t: Go stick your head in the mud.”
― Jesse Ventura
“I have been definitely influenced more by Latin American writers than by any other type of writer. They are very close in terms of voice – their humor, their fatalism, their… well, that over-used term ‘magical realism.’ It’s a wonderful term that’s just been used so much, we don’t know what it means anymore.”
― Jessica Hagedorn
“I really like when different stories are represented, it’s not just the same kind of person, and when there’s humor in it, and there’s relationships.”
― Jessica Williams
“My dad has a certain spirit, a twinkle in his eye, someone who can set a certain standard for players but also convey it with humor. What I learned from him is that coaching is, more than anything, about connecting with people.”
― Jill Ellis
“Humor – I see it as a survival skill.”
― Jill McCorkle
“Magoo’s appeal lies in our hostility toward an older generation. But he’s not only nearsighted physically. His mind is selective of what it sees, too. That is where the humor, the satire lies, in the difference between what he thinks he sees and reality as we see it.”
― Jim Backus
“I think my sense of humor is Jewish. I’m smarter than most white people, which is kind of a Jewish thing, too.”
― Jim Goad
“My father was very athletic. He was a life-of-the-party kind of guy – walked into the room and there was a presence about him. He was a great storyteller, just a terrific sense of humor. Having said that, he never put all of those talents or abilities into some public arena. He was never interviewed, never on television. His family was everything.”
― Jim Nantz
“I do enjoy Dennis Miller, I do enjoy Chris Rock when they do their political humor, but it’s never been my goal… I love relatable humor.”
― Jo Koy
“It’s easier to sit there and say you don’t like feminists because they don’t have a sense of humor.”
― Joan Jett
“I need a man with a good sense of humor and a kind heart.”
― Joanna Krupa
“I used to be neurotic. I didn’t like myself very much. But somewhere in my mid-40s, my neuroses stopped seeming so important. I developed a sense of humor.”
― Joanne Woodward
“I have this horrible sense of humor where I think discomfort is funny – partly because I experience discomfort a lot, and it’s a way of laughing at it and getting a release.”
― Joaquin Phoenix
“As an actor, I’m attracted to drama; as a director, it’s humor – because it’s the story of my life, and I can’t be that serious about it. Being alone is a big theme in all my movies, both as a director and as an actress.”
― Jodie Foster
“Both of my kids have my sense of humor – they’re definitely entertaining.”
― Jodie Sweetin
“Dali had a good sense of humor – obviously you could tell just looking at him; he was funny.”
― Joe Grant
“One of my favorite experiences was ‘9 to 5,’ for one reason: Dolly Parton. I learned what it means to really work hard and do it with a sense of humor about yourself. Every day was joyful.”
― Joe Mantello
“What’s lovely about ‘Eureka’ is that it’s a sci-fi show, but it’s not monsters from outer space; it’s not craziness from outer space. It’s just about this community of people and what they do. These geniuses have sometimes done wonderful things and sometimes created global warming. It has this wonderful left-of-center sense of humor.”
― Joe Morton
“Robert Bloch taught me about mixing horror and humor.”
― Joe R. Lansdale
“People are texting and smash into the car in front of them – I think there is some humor in that. And the virtual games. People are playing these virtual games, but they’re real – I mean, the people are really playing, but it’s not a game.”
― Joe Walsh
“This is a feminist bookstore. There is no humor section.”
― John Callahan
“Humor without sadness underneath it feels cheap and aggressive.”
― John Cameron Mitchell
“I think the humor, when applied in the right amount, only serves to intensify the other emotions in a given song; it highlights them, makes them stand out.”
― John Grant
“I grew up a skinny kid with a funny last name and coke bottle glasses, so I experienced my fair share of bullies. But I learned, with the help of humor and resilience, to never give up.”
― John Hickenlooper
“My type of humor is me not caring whether people know what I’m talking about or not.”
― John Hodgman
“I like good humor.”
― John J. McLaughlin
“Humor is richly rewarding to the person who employs it. It has some value in gaining and holding attention, but it has no persuasive value at all.”
― John Kenneth Galbraith
“I’ll let you in on a secret: I can’t stand Jay Ward. I hate being compared to Rocky and Bullwinkle. It’s just a different style of humor.”
― John Kricfalusi
“Joe Barbera’s s always complaining that he can’t get humor into cartoons anymore. Just do it. You’ve got your money. Why do they let the networks run their lives?”
― John Kricfalusi
“Academics tend to have wonderfully infantile senses of humor.”
― John Lithgow
“I love Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart because they’re bringing irony back into American humor, which is a delicious treat. The entire Colbert persona of being extreme right-wing when he’s not at all is highly amusing. He does it so well, but sometimes a little too well. My wife is convinced he’s completely that way.”
― John Lydon
“I don’t understand how somebody wouldn’t have a sense of humor about themselves.”
― John Malkovich
“My dad is and was very funny and had a really dry sense of humor, which, as a kid, seemed un-fun. But in retrospect, it’s kind of hilarious.”
― John Mulaney
“When I teach the formal curriculum, I have the chance to think about it ahead of time. I can rehearse it. I can illustrate it with self-deprecating humor and humble-sounding personal disclosure. I can try to make it comes out just right.”
― John Ortberg
“I think that humor is part of what saves us from despair.”
― John Perry Barlow
“My sense of humor has saved me more than a couple of times in my life.”
― John Prine
“A farce, or slapstick humor, does well universally.”
― John Ratzenberger
“Sure, the comedians who swear or use scatological humor can get laughs, but they’re uncomfortable laughs.”
― John Ratzenberger
“Humor is a way to deal with stresses. It is a way to cope.”
― John Ross Bowie
“Humor is rare in science fiction… there’s so little of it that it automatically reminds you of other heroes with that acerbic humor when you find it.”
― John Scalzi
“Humor is my default mode.”
― John Updike
“As people, we’re generally optimistic, no matter how disabled our lives are, and we find the humor in the darkest situations.”
― John Wells
“I grew up in a family that was very barbed and difficult, and there was a lot of humor. None of it was painless humor. All of it was at someone else’s expense. It was kind of always about power.”
― John Wells
“I have wit in my work and a sense of humor, but I do not use irony in any way.”
― John Zorn
“The ultimate storyteller is Shakespeare, who was able to get the ‘groundlings’ to laugh at his bawdy humor and storylines but could still be studied by scholars to this day for the complexity of his language, meter, and symbolism. That’s the real guy.”
― Jon Favreau
“It’s great to be able to connect parents with children both emotionally and through humor. I look forward to exploring family entertainment once again and examining the specifics of our day-to-day lives against the backdrop of an extraordinary adventure.”
― Jon Favreau
“Humor connects us, especially in politics. It’s a way of surprising one another with shared context and experience.”
― Jon Lovett
“Humor is a way of saying we’re all seeing the same ridiculous, absurd, infuriating things together.”
― Jon Lovett
“Expand the definition of ‘reading’ to include non-fiction, humor, graphic novels, magazines, action adventure, and, yes, even websites. It’s the pleasure of reading that counts; the focus will naturally broaden. A boy won’t read shark books forever.”
― Jon Scieszka
“My platform has been to reach reluctant readers. And one of the best ways I found to motivate them is to connect them with reading that interests them, to expand the definition of reading to include humor, science fiction/fantasy, nonfiction, graphic novels, wordless books, audio books and comic books.”
― Jon Scieszka
“It’s how you define yourself. It’s not Nirvana or Pearl Jam: it’s, ‘Do you watch ‘Portlandia’ or ‘Amy Schumer’?’ It relates to a specific sense of humor. And, ‘Do you know the hidden gems?’ Like, if you knew the Pixies in the ’80s.”
― Jonathan Krisel
“I love to laugh. A sense of humor is really important.”
― Jonathan Scott
“Even people that I agree with can do something that would be a target for a bit of humor.”
― Jonathan Shapiro
“Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.”
― Jonathan Swift
“I’m a novelist first, and I wrote a bunch of books, and everything I write, I just find people are more interesting when there’s an element of humor to it.”
― Jonathan Tropper
“I really wouldn’t want to live in America. I found New York claustrophobic and dirty. I missed England when I was there, simple things like smells and the British sense of humor.”
― Jonny Lee Miller
“I was a giant fan of ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway’ in high school, and I was obsessed with Jim Carrey and cut out any picture of Jim Carrey that ever came in any kind of magazine. I put it all over my walls. At the time, I thought humor was just repeating lines from ‘Ace Ventura’ ad nauseum in the back of my advanced math class.”
― Jordan Klepper
“What a newspaper needs in its news, in its headlines, and on its editorial page is terseness, humor, descriptive power, satire, originality, good literary style, clever condensation, and accuracy, accuracy, accuracy!”
― Joseph Pulitzer
“A good sense of humor will get you everywhere.”
― Josh Bowman
“Why is it okay to write a work of literary fiction where horrible, explicit things happen, where you can’t write a book of humor where silly, explicit things are happening?”
― Josh Gondelman
“Even in the middle of tragedy, we find moments of humor, moments of tenderness, of simple happiness.”
― Josh Holloway
“I’ve always had a sick sense of humor, and I’ve always wanted that to permeate the music because I don’t take myself seriously. I take the music seriously, but I know I’m not God’s gift to anyone except my mom.”
― Josh Homme
“My humor is my creativity, and my skepticism is a gift.”
― Josh Tillman
“Our ability to find humor in the world, to make connections between previously unconnected notions, to create new ideas, to share in a common culture: All these essentially human acts depend on memory.”
― Joshua Foer
“Why anybody gets my sense of humor I never know, but I do know that when they do, I keep them as close as I possibly can.”
― Joss Whedon
“I never write anything without humor, just because I like humor, but at the same time, it is a way for anything fantastical to become relatable.”
― Joss Whedon
“I should say, one of the things about being a widow or a widower, you really, really need a sense of humor, because everything’s going to fall apart.”
― Joyce Carol Oates
“I have a good sense of humor. I think everything we do should have whimsy in it.”
― Judith Leiber
“For me, humor is everything!”
― Judy Gold
“Mother humor is such a universal theme. I wrote a show called ’25 Questions for a Jewish Mother.’ I had people coming up to me after the show saying, ‘I’m Baptist, and my mother is just like yours.’”
― Judy Gold
“I love the vulgar. I kind of have the humor of a 17-year-old boy.”
― Judy Gold
“I’ve been a horror fan pretty much in the sense that my sense of horror and my sense of humor were both equally kindled by films as a kid.”
― Julian Barratt
“I’m able to see humor in a lot of things.”
― Juliana Hatfield
“I’m still trying to figure out how to write about cancer and my family’s experience with it. If I had been able to write ‘The Pura Principle’ back in those days, I’m positive it would have had no humor in it. Which means the story would have been false.”
― Junot Diaz
“Although Kurt Vonnegut may not be considered a humor writer, ‘Breakfast of Champions’ is one of the funniest books I’ve ever read.”
― Justin Halpern
“I guess, for me, I’ve always thought that there was humor everywhere. And as a kid, I just, you know, I grew up an only child, and I – sort of nothing made me happier than to make my parents laugh. I remember I had costumes and things laying around the house that I was, you know, anything that I could do to make my parents laugh.”
― Justin Timberlake
“People in real life don’t get ballplayers’ humor, the way we talk in the clubhouse.”
― Justin Verlander
“My parents have always had a great sense of humor. And I really appreciate good humor in songs, witty lyrics that sneak up on you and then you listen again, and say: ‘That’s so funny.’ John Prine’s songs have always had this really witty tone.”
― Kacey Musgraves
“On ‘Sunny,’ the main actors are adults, and we’re all friends, and we all have the same sense of humor, so there’s a lot of improvising.”
― Kaitlin Olson
“I would say that Emma Stone and Emma Watson are two very talented young actresses who are very intelligent and have a great sense of humor and have learned to balance what they love with their acting career, and I think that’s really a great thing.”
― Kara Hayward
“Two young actresses I admire are Emma Stone and Emma Watson, because they are intelligent, talented actresses and have a great sense of humor. They have learned to balance what they love in life – acting, school and everything else.”
― Kara Hayward
“Humor’s always been the problem of my work, hasn’t it? When working, I feel satisfied when I surprise myself. And when I surprise myself, I wind up laughing.”
― Kara Walker
“Daddy was hilarious. He could take the most mundane event and tell it so that we all on the floor laughing. He trained me in the joys of humor.”
― Karen DeCrow
“My family has been amazing, and they understand how blessed I am. They’ve been able to keep my sense of humor.”
― Karen Duffy
“The President has a wonderful sense of humor, which is one of the reasons it is so much fun to work for him.”
― Karen Hughes
“I love puns. I’ve been known to turn the car around just to take advantage of a good pun situation. It really is the highest form of humor.”
― Karin Slaughter
“Wit is an explosion of the compound spirit.”
― Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
“For me, the biggest thing I’ve learned is how to be myself and the fact that viewers actually want to feel like they’re getting to know you as a person. They value you because you’re a reporter and you’re bringing them new information, but they also want to feel like they get a sense of your sense of humor and what things you’re interested in.”
― Kasie Hunt
“If I ever have sex with someone I might be able to develop a sense of humor.”
― Kate Beckinsale
“Lesbian humor isn’t trying to sell anything, it doesn’t have to sell out. Coming out as a lesbian onstage is still a very political act; if it weren’t, more women would do it.”
― Kate Clinton
“I like working on stories where I can explore the darker corners of childhood without illustrations but with humor.”
― Kate Klise
“In the B-52s, each of us has our own wacky sensibility, which, when we come together, it’s like the four-headed monster. And it’s great because we have the same sense of humor.”
― Kate Pierson
“I know, being a band that’s mostly gay and has women in it, I just think that there are the male icon bands: they are always – and they deserve it – but they are always touted as, ‘These guys are heavy-duty.’ I think bands, because we have a sense of humor, we are not always taken as seriously.”
― Kate Pierson
“In a band with humor, it’s easy to be a caricature, especially when you’ve been around as long as we have. But we sing those songs as genuine as we can, always from the heart. When we do the fish sounds in ‘Rock Lobster,’ Cindy and I are pouring our hearts out.”
― Kate Pierson
“I don’t need someone with a hot body. He can be fat or overweight and have a belly. It’s very much about style and substance and humor, interest, curiosity and really being smart.”
― Kate Walsh
“I think you have to have a sense of humor about every movie that you’re doing. Your character needs to be relatable in a way that, even when you’re doing the most bizarre things, sometimes a bit of tongue in cheek is necessary to keep up the believability of it.”
― Katharine Isabelle
“I was certainly not a class clown; I confused and angered a lot of people with my sense of humor.”
― Katherine Ryan
“I like art with a sense of humor. I don’t have a huge art education to understand everything. I don’t think that means that art has to be watered down to the lowest common denominator, though. I don’t think you have to go to college to be able appreciate great art, but I like art that doesn’t take itself too seriously.”
― Kathleen Hanna
“I try to give all my characters a sense of humor, so I guess I feel like I have done comedy, but maybe I’m better known for drama.”
― Kathy Baker
“A lot of stars don’t have a sense of humor.”
― Kathy Griffin
“Okay, sense of humor: plus one. Being able to laugh at yourself: plus one. Being able to laugh at other people without being mean: plus one. Vanity: minus one.”
― Katie Aselton
“You are not just a funny person or just a journalist. Most people are hybrids of having a smart opinion and a great sense of humor.”
― Katie Nolan
“I really hate sitcoms on television with canned laughter and stuff. What really makes me laugh is the real-life stuff. I’ve got a dry sense of humor.”
― Katie Price
“I just try to write what I think would really happen, and with grief and tragedy, there are these naturally occurring moments of levity and humor and absurdity. I think that’s what life is really like. Sadness gets interrupted, and happiness gets interrupted.”
― Kaui Hart Hemmings
“You have to fight for your marriage, do whatever it takes. The commitment has to be there. And if you don’t have a sense of humor, I don’t know how anybody makes it.”
― Kay Robertson
“I think a lot of people, when they don’t quite fit in in the world, use humor to combat that and to find their place in society.”
― Kaya Scodelario
“Surprise is not humor. I think that there can be a fine line there.”
― Keegan-Michael Key
“There’s a lot of movies, and I’ve made some of them that could be categorized this way, but there’s definitely been a trend in animated features of all types to be a little bit cynical, if you will, to have a little bit of ‘knowing’ humor to them, kind of a wink to the audience.”
― Kelly Asbury
“There’s a certain kind of guy, a certain kind of humor, that goes with Irish cops and firemen.”
― Ken Howard
“The characters I play are tough, but I love laughing and humor.”
― Ken Watanabe
“The thing that I get so often with network comedies – and, I think, some of the most brilliant people in the world do them – but it’s easy to hide behind a joke. I kind of feel like when you have to face things, and you don’t have humor, it becomes very vulnerable; it exposes your deepest and darkest fears in some aspects.”
― Kenya Barris
“I consider myself a disciple of Norman Lear. And one of the things he did was topic-driven humor.”
― Kenya Barris
“Comedy used to be a vehicle for change. Now, comedy has gotten to this quirky, nonsensical place, which I enjoy. But I do think there is room for discussion-based humor. We can tell those stories in a way that feels edifying.”
― Kenya Barris
“I’m just very amused by five-year-old humor.”
― Kesha
“You have to have a sense of humor about life to get through it.”
― Kesha
“Humor is the secret into the audience’s other ranges of emotions.”
― Kevin Feige
“My daughter doesn’t even get my humor. She’s like, ‘Um, no. I don’t get it, Dad. Mmm, no, not that one, Dad.’”
― Kevin Hart
“Edward Norton and I have known each other awhile. I just think he’s the real deal, supremely talented and smart. He’s got a great sense of humor.”
― Kevin Spacey
“Music and the blues, they have taught me a lot. I think in this book, ‘Book Of Hours,’ there is this blues sensibility. There are moments of humor even in the sorrow, and I’m really interested in the way that the blues have that tragic-comic view of life – what Langston Hughes called ‘laughing to keep from crying.’”
― Kevin Young
“It’s weird doing red carpets; it’s uncomfortable. But you can have a sense of humor about it.”
― Kirsten Dunst
“We do not take humor seriously enough.”
― Konrad Lorenz
“Guys usually like my sense of humor, and I am pretty down to earth. And I’m a driven person.”
― Kreayshawn
“Humor writing is something that comes naturally to me.”
― Kristan Higgins
“Humor writing requires a rhythm and timing, as well as some kind of connection to the reader, and I think that’s how I tap into it.”
― Kristan Higgins
“My dad has a dry, deadpan sense of humor, and my mom has an unexpected, wacky take on things. They really encouraged laughing at ourselves and the weirdness of situations that come up growing up in politics.”
― Kristin Gore
“Both of my parents have great senses of humor.”
― Kristin Gore
“I’ve always chosen my band members based on their sense of humor. It might sound stupid, but it means not only are they fun to live with on a tour bus for years, but humor implies intelligence.”
― Kristin Hersh
“I grew up as a very sarcastic person. I was always the class clown, and to date girls, I had to be really funny. I was really skinny growing up. I was so thin, I had to run around in the shower to get wet. That kind of thin. So I always had to rely on humor and sarcasm.”
― Kurt Fuller
“All the people who follow me on Twitter know my sense of humor. I sometimes forget the blogosphere will give it more weight than I intended.”
― Kurt Sutter
“When I was doing research on the M.C.s and spending time with these cats, one of the things that struck me and made me realize that I could deliver this world to an audience was their really dark and acute sense of humor.”
― Kurt Sutter
“My dad’s really funny. The male sense of humor – like my grandfather’s and such – is pretty bizarre. Basically my dad’s side of the family is where the bizarreness comes from. It’s a little goofy and a little out there.”
― Kurt Vile
“Humor is important. Nothing against bands that are always a downer, but the reality is – it just becomes theater.”
― Kurt Vile
“I think that sense of humor is important in marriage. A sense of humor gets people through marriage.”
― Kyle Chandler
“Sometimes a scene may be about one thing, and it may end up still being about that, but the emotionality of it comes from somewhere else, or the humor of it comes from somewhere else, and it gives it that real-life quality.”
― Kyle Chandler
“Humor has been the balm of my life, but it’s been reserved for those close to me, not part of the public Lana.”
― Lana Turner
“You’ve got to have a sense of humor to keep your sanity.”
― Lance Bass
“I’m interested not just in projects that I’ll be starring in, but producing film and TV that’s really quality and great for adults; and when I say ‘great for adults,’ it doesn’t mean without humor, because I’m also interested in doing comedy.”
― Lance Reddick
“Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.”
― Langston Hughes
“Humor is laughing at what you haven’t got when you ought to have it.”
― Langston Hughes
“Men love it. They have a sense of humor, whereas a lot of women are threatened or just don’t get it.”
― Lara Flynn Boyle
“One doesn’t have a sense of humor. It has you.”
― Larry Gelbart
“Solutions-oriented campaigning with a little passion and a little humor; I think that will go a long way. I think people are desperate for it.”
― Laura Ingraham
“If you’re that hypersensitive about color and don’t have a sense of humor, don’t marry out of your race.”
― Laura Schlessinger
“Often, contrasts bring art to life: the bright speck of paint on a dark canvas; the tightrope walk between humor and tragedy.”
― Laura van den Berg
“Humor has always been important to me. If there is a shield of faith that you can keep up against difficulties, humor is the Teflon coating.”
― Laurel Lea
“I’ve always thought my strengths were I’m smart, and I have a good sense of humor. I definitely struggle with feeling confident.”
― Lauren Graham
“My own inclination is to skew towards humor. They say that some people view life as a comedy, others as a tragedy. Me? Comedy all the way.”
― Lauren Willig
“I want everything I do to have humor in it, because it seems to me that all of life has that.”
― Lawrence Kasdan
“Sometimes Americans don’t quite get my sense of humor. My good ol’ British sarcasm seems to go over their heads.”
― Lee Westwood
“I think humor is important for all of us, and a great comedian is a great treasure.”
― Leila Josefowicz
“All my humor is based on destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I’d be standing in the bread line – right in back of J. Edgar Hoover.”
― Lenny Bruce
“Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.”
― Leo Rosten
“I like dark humor. My favorite movie of all time is ‘Harold and Maude.’”
― Leslie Mann
“Things are more complex today, and I think humor has changed a a great deal. People are more sensitive today.”
― Lewis Grizzard
“I hang out with the ‘nerdy’ people – they have a different sense of humor than most kids.”
― Liam Aiken
“This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the character of our thought.”
― Lin Yutang
“I learned that on kids’ shows, you have to eat a lot of stuff. A lot of the humor comes from food and gross-out humor.”
― Linda Cardellini
“I’ve had a very laughable career and what has seen me through is my sense of humor.”
― Linda Gray
“A lot about Congress is about forming good working relationships with people, and humor can really help you do that.”
― Linda Sanchez
“I did the ‘Bionic Woman,’ which of course had a lot of humor in it, and that was really a function of a lot of the ad-libbing and the things that I did in it.”
― Lindsay Wagner
“Probably it is impossible for humor to be ever a revolutionary weapon. Candide can do little more than generate irony.”
― Lionel Trilling
“We’re starting to push the envelope in terms of the expectations, and you can also have your own style, personality and sense of humor, because now we’re allowed to.”
― Lisa Guerrero
“The guys in my band are great-we watch movies, we eat pizza, take walks, read books. Everybody has a really great sense of humor. And my boyfriend comes and visits me on the road.”
― Lisa Loeb
“Humor is the only way to tell a story. Especially the dark ones.”
― Lisa Lutz
“I’ve always adored the filmmaker Sam Fuller. The first time I watched ‘Shock Corridor’ was such a magnificent discovery. I love his lack of subtlety, the way he tackles serious topics with bold and inappropriate humor.”
― Lisa Lutz
“You see, that’s another thing that my parents gave me: an enormously great sense of humor.”
― Liza Minnelli
“I love a girl with a sense of humor. Someone who can make me laugh and that I can get along with and talk with and who is just sweet overall, inside and out.”
― Logan Henderson
“I do talk about celebrity relationships like Kim Kardashian’s. I like to find the humor in love.”
― Loni Love
“M*A*S*H offered real characters and everybody identified with them because they had such soul. The humor was intelligent and it always assumed that you had an intellect.”
― Loretta Swit
“Humor comes from the surprise release of some buried tension.”
― Lorrie Moore
“J. makes me laugh. He’s incredibly dry and has a pretty harsh sense of humor that I enjoy.”
― Lou Barlow
“The problem with having a sense of humor is often that people you use it on aren’t in a very good mood.”
― Lou Holtz
“I’ve met a lot of people who’ve lost their jobs and they still have a sense of humor.”
― Louis C. K.
“I’m not funny. What I am is brave.”
― Lucille Ball
“Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world. So if it is correct to say that humor was stamped out in Nazi Germany, that does not mean that people were not in good spirits, or anything of that sort, but something much deeper and more important.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein
“We’re all funny. Humor unites us.”
― Luis Alberto Urrea
“I think ‘Country Girl’ is one song that can veer into country or hip-hop or rap. You can listen to it and enjoy the humor and the fun in it.”
― Luke Bryan
“Humor is this great equalizer. It gets people’s defenses down, and once they’re down, you can discuss some really difficult topics.”
― Luvvie Ajayi
“People use the guise of art, and artistic expression, to do all kinds of hateful things. It’s like Trump and everybody else using the guise of humor to say hateful things, the excuse being, ‘I was just being funny.’”
― Luvvie Ajayi
“If I didn’t try to eavesdrop on every bus ride I take or look for the humor when I go for a walk, I would just be depressed all the time.”
― Lynda Barry
“Humor is such a wonderful thing, helping you realize what a fool you are but how beautiful that is at the same time.”
― Lynda Barry
“Broadway’s never my end goal because of the plays I write. These are tough plays. Of course there’s a lot of humor, but my goal is just to reach as wide an audience as possible, however that happens.”
― Lynn Nottage
“Although humor is present in every one of my films, it has always been used as a way to make the darker, heavier stuff in my stories more palatable. I never set out to make ‘Humpday’ a comedy.”
― Lynn Shelton
“I’d probably describe my sense of humor as ‘twisted,’ I guess. It’s not hard to make me laugh, especially when I’m surrounded by my close friends, especially my bandmates.”
― Mac DeMarco
“I genuinely liked all of the cast members very much. Steve had a wicked sense of humor. I remember Russell coming to my rescue, once. I watched Eric evolve before everyone’s eyes. Maurice loved what he did, so. He treated his character with respect, down to the costuming.”
― Madeleine Stowe
“If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
“Michael Pollan is a champion. In all ways. A man of great integrity, humor, and common sense and kindness.”
― Maira Kalman
“I like Thomas Jefferson, though he intimidated me. I thought he would have been very tough to be around. I don’t know if he had such a sense of humor.”
― Maira Kalman
“I like the brooding man – a brooding man with a sense of humor.”
― Maira Kalman
“If you look at ‘The Best Man,’ there’s a lot of humor in that, but I never consider that movie a comedy. I felt that it was a drama with comedic elements and comedic parts to it.”
― Malcolm D. Lee
“Bad humor is an evasion of reality; good humor is an acceptance of it.”
― Malcolm Muggeridge
“My stories are very somber, so I think I need the comic ingredient. Besides, life has so much humor.”
― Manuel Puig
“I don’t think humor is forced upon my universe; it’s a part of it.”
― Manuel Puig
“Humor and laughter – not necessarily derogatory derision – are my pet tools. This may come from my general philosophy of never taking the world too seriously – for fear of dying of boredom.”
― Marcel Duchamp
“I love dry British humor. I love to sketch in my off time. I love tequila.”
― Maren Morris
“Sometimes the only way to deal with horrific things in life is through a dark sense of humor.”
― Margaret Cho
“It’s a funny old world.”
― Margaret Thatcher
“Self-deprecating humor and brutal honesty is a really freeing thing.”
― Margo Price
“I try to find humor in everything I do, because I think all great plays – even great tragedies – have enormous humor in them.”
― Marian Seldes
“The difference between me as Brian Warner or Marilyn Manson is just words. Same personality, sensibility, sense of humor, behavior. He is me.”
― Marilyn Manson
“I think I have always had a little humor.”
― Marilyn Monroe
“I quite like dark humor.”
― Marina and the Diamonds
“But if you don’t watch me, I will try and sneak in some humor. I see humor everywhere in life around me.”
― Marion Ross
“Writing is not for me. I completely lose my sense of humor when I write. I become extremely pathetic, very sensational. Images give me possibilities that I don’t have with words.”
― Marjane Satrapi
“I have a good sense of humor. I’m not Martin Lawrence by any means. I’m a little too country to be Chris Rock. But I fancy myself as being somebody with a good sense of humor.”
― Mark Henry
“I translated an Emile Zola book, ‘The Belly of Paris,’ because I didn’t find an existing translation that captured his sense of humor. Humor is the first victim of translation.”
― Mark Kurlansky
“When I started, I wanted to be thought of as tortured and seductive, not funny, but humor tends to be a reflexive part of a person’s sensibility. It’s an almost impossible thing to teach anyone, which leads me to believe that it’s intuitive.”
― Mark Leyner
“Humor is very very risky, particularly for a candidate, unless he’s been in so long that it just doesn’t matter, and he’s not running for president. But it’s just that people are so sensitive and so touchy, and you’re just going to upset somebody without ever realizing it.”
― Mark Russell
“It’s very hard to write humor.”
― Mark Strand
“Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.”
― Mark Twain
“Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.”
― Mark Twain
“The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven.”
― Mark Twain
“Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.”
― Mark Twain
“Nothing in man is more serious than his sense of humor; it is the sign that he wants all the truth.”
― Mark Van Doren
“The ‘Twilight’ movies are great in their own right, but they certainly don’t have any sense of humor to them.”
― Mark Waters
“Humor comes in all forms, and everyone has their cup of tea about what makes them laugh. But the day we censor humor is a sad one for sure.”
― Marlee Matlin
“To me, ‘Scream’ is a masterpiece on every level – the performances, the humor, the tone – it’s just flawless.”
― Marley Shelton
“I think in my case, I had no choice but to have a good sense of humor. I grew up with my dad, Danny Thomas, and George Burns and Bob Hope and Milton Berle and Sid Caesar and all those guys were at our house all the time and telling jokes and making each other laugh.”
― Marlo Thomas
“The rejection that we all take and the sadness and the aggravation and the loss of jobs and all of the things that we live through in our lives, without a sense of humor, I don’t know how people make it.”
― Marlo Thomas
“Humor helps ease the tension of race and the differences in society. If there wasn’t comedy I don’t know if Obama could have ever become president.”
― Marlon Wayans
“My mother was Irish; she had this great sense of humor, and both my parents loved films. There was a very vibrant discourse about politics and everything that was going on in the world where I grew up. So I was genetically predisposed to go into the performing arts.”
― Martin Donovan
“People think I’m a very serious actor, which I am. But you know, if you don’t have a sense of humor doing what I do, you perish.”
― Martin Landau
“Those years on the golf course as a caddie, boy, those people were something. They were vulgar, some were alcoholics, racist, they were very difficult people to deal with. A lot of them didn’t have a sense of humor.”
― Martin Sheen
“I just have a deadpan sense of humor, I guess.”
― Martine Syms
“Our humor turns our anger into a fine art.”
― Mary Kay Blakely
“’24’ is a pretty serious show – there isn’t a lot of improv that is happening. Having said that, I do play around with the delivery. A lot of the humor comes from playing a character who is very furious and really up in her own brain and in a serious situation. That is humorous to me.”
― Mary Lynn Rajskub
“Humor does not rescue us from unhappiness, but enables us to move back from it a little.”
― Mason Cooley
“If you approach Cannes with a sense of humor, nothing is that bad. You have to take it for what it is; otherwise, it’s silly.”
― Mathieu Amalric
“If somebody has no sense of humor, I think that’s a great place to start for British comedy in terms of your character.”
― Matt Berry
“I like doing comedy, I like doing drama. Naturally I like to do, I like doing dramas, I like conflict, and when I do a comedy, you know, I’ve found that, like, romantic comedy is the trickiest one, because often it’s neither: it’s not romantic and it’s not funny. So, like, I like a comedy that’s biting. It’s biting humor or really quirky humor.”
― Matt Dillon
“One of the great things about the Internet is that you can read what everybody has to say about everything. It is fascinating to me, the critiques about humor by people who have no sense of humor.”
― Matt Groening
“I can’t be as open on national television as I can when I’m having dinner with friends. But that doesn’t mean the type of person I am is different. My values, my dislikes, my sense of humor are the same.”
― Matt Lauer
“You can’t be funny if you don’t have good material.”
― Matt LeBlanc
“I never particularly thought of myself as great with girls. I can be awkward, and I have a strange sense of humor at times. But I’ve also been learning to try and embrace that.”
― Matt McGorry
“Jeffrey Zeldman had an astonishing ability to craft a seductive coolness using educated references, dry humor, and retro/organic imagery.”
― Matt Mullenweg
“Even celebrities, most people have a sense of humor. Most of the people we meet who we’ve done on the show, like it.”
― Matt Stone
“I’ve got a great sense of humor, and if I’m able to say or do something in a movie that people feel like they want to repeat, that’s hugely flattering.”
― Matthew McConaughey
“I need a woman to have a quirky sense of humor. There’s a bunch of jokes I use, and if she doesn’t get them, she’s probably not for me.”
― Matthew Perry
“Believe it or not, there’s a lot of humor in ‘Mad Men.’ Especially in the dark moments.”
― Matthew Weiner
“God has a most wicked sense of humor.”
― Maureen O’Hara
“I seem to have a one-track mind. When I was having babies, I did nothing else. When I do pictures, I go all out. I really think it is easier to manage my seven. You can’t afford to humor each one of them. They have to learn to do things when they are told.”
― Maureen O’Sullivan
“My father could be very witty, even if the humor was always on the darker side of irony.”
― Maurice Sendak
“It is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humor.”
― Max Eastman
“Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully.”
― Max Eastman
“When you say a friend has a sense of humor do you mean that he makes you laugh, or that he can make you laugh?”
― Max Frisch
“Kindness and a generous spirit go a long way. And a sense of humor. It’s like medicine – very healing.”
― Max Irons
“I admired Stephen Daldry very much; I think he’s a brilliant director, and also, I feel close to him because he has a lot of theater behind him. He’s also a man of great imagination and a lovely sense of humor.”
― Max von Sydow
“Ingmar Bergman had a great sense of humor, and he had a very special, characteristic laugh that you always recognized – if he went to watch a theater show, ‘Ah! He is here tonight.’”
― Max von Sydow
“I consider myself to have a decent sense of humor. What’s life without a sense of humor?”
― Mayer Hawthorne
“A lot of people into Tool, for some reason, are not interested in humor.”
― Maynard James Keenan
“You have to laugh at yourself. I do a lot of humor about all ethnicities that are at the show – Latinos, Asians, Indians… What I say is, ‘We’re laughing together. I’m laughing with you, not at you.’ Never say, ‘Oh, I’m better than you.’”
― Maz Jobrani
“I think very long and hard about every possibly offensive joke I want to make. I really hate mean humor and would hate to make anyone reading my jokes feel truly bad.”
― Megan Amram
“I have the humor of a 9-year-old boy, and sometimes I’ve had laughing fits on-air.”
― Megyn Kelly
“Finding a way to find humor in things that are hardcore is definitely something that, I think, the sitcom does best.”
― Megyn Price
“Humor is just another defense against the universe.”
― Mel Brooks
“You may not like the humor, but that is why every radio has an on-off button.”
― Mel Karmazin
“Sometimes, humor is the only way we get through the day.”
― Melina Matsoukas
“Throw in the humor, throw in that personality, try things you wouldn’t normally try.”
― Melinda Clarke
“I think being a parent is knowing how to love. Sometimes love is discipline, sometimes it’s humor, sometimes it’s listening.”
― Melissa Etheridge
“My humor tends to be a little more edgy than is appropriate for ‘Twilight,’ although I got some in there. That was fun! There’s just a tonal difference. For me, storytelling is storytelling. But, I do like writing for grown ups.”
― Melissa Rosenberg
“Every Brit I met had the best sense of humor. They’re hilarious: very dry and witty.”
― Merritt Patterson
“I’d like to think my brand shares some of those characteristics we like to think of as classically American – a certain straightforwardness, honesty, a sense of humor, inclusiveness, practicality – all those great Yankee traits. And I don’t mean the baseball team.”
― Michael Bastian
“I think empathy is romantic. I think humor is romantic. Kindness is romantic. I think those kind of gestures of caring and love are romantic.”
― Michael Buble
“The main problem with films is that everybody always thinks of us as a violent people. We are not. We are spiritual. And when you show someone without a sense of humor or families, which is the way you usually see Indians in movies, then they are without a spiritual base and become subhuman.”
― Michael Horse
“I think the scariest person in the world is the person with no sense of humor.”
― Michael J. Fox
“My view of life is colored by humor and looking at the best in any situation.”
― Michael J. Fox
“I was pretty much a child of ‘Monty Python.’ I grew up loving that type of humor and even structured a lot of humor in the same fashion.”
― Michael Jai White
“My legacy would be that you don’t have to give up anything. You can be chic but have a sense of humor, you can be sexy but comfortable, you can be timeless but fresh.”
― Michael Kors
“I love the Swedish people for their detective novels, their archipelago, their sense of humor, their carbonated vodka, and most especially, for their wonderful hospitality.”
― Michael Levitt
“I’ve been encouraging documentary filmmakers to use more and more humor, and they’re loath to do that because they think if it’s a documentary it has to be deadly serious – it has to be like medicine that you’re supposed to take. And I think it’s what keeps the mass audience from going to documentaries.”
― Michael Moore
“Any good humor is sophomoric. ‘Sophomoric’ is the liberal word for funny.”
― Michael O’Donoghue
“Paul Rudd has a very specific brand of humor.”
― Michael Pena
“’War on Everyone,’ I think… the script was hilarious to me, but it’s very dark, dark humor. It’s super dark.”
― Michael Pena
“When you finish a drama, you go, ‘I can’t wait to do a comedy.’ When you finish a comedy, you go, ‘I want to do a dramedy, dark humor.’”
― Michael Pena
“Scientists have this stigma of being guys or women in white lab coats with no sense of humor, no passion, devoid of all emotion, and that has been the complete opposite of the scientists I’ve met.”
― Michael Pitt
“A lot of my humor centers on the act of telling jokes and I think this can prevent certain audiences from suspending their feeling of disbelief. It might piss a few people off, but I can’t help it.”
― Michael Showalter
“I always felt different as a kid, and the Kinks were like, ‘Yeah, we’re the Kinks.’ Celebrate your difference; don’t be afraid of your sense of humor, or your personality, or who you are. It emboldened me.”
― Michael Weatherly
“The great thing about university is that they incline you to get up and do it, from the Classics to modern plays, to the humor that Monty Pythons made popular.”
― Michael York
“I’ve always liked using humor, but what I had to with ‘Chewing Gum’ was take out a lot of darkness so it would be a bit more feel-good.”
― Michaela Coel
“I’m not too modest of a person. I’ve got a pretty blue sense of humor.”
― Michelle Monaghan
“It felt as if things were literally slipping through my fingers. Things were just streaming away from me. I lost my sense of humor. I’m still looking for that.”
― Michelle Williams
“A sense of humor is a major defense against minor troubles.”
― Mignon McLaughlin
“There is also this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means, draw it all out, and hold him to it.”
― Miguel de Cervantes
“I love the humor of ‘Monty Python.’ I always remember being so impressed by how violent ‘Monty Python’ are, actually, when you look at what they do. Terry Gilliam has a great way of kind of proposing violence.”
― Miguel Sapochnik
“It’s nice when you are with a guy who can find the humor in touch situations and be comfortable enough in his own skin that he can laugh at himself.”
― Mikaela Hoover
“I think in life, the sense of humor and comedy always exists.”
― Mike Epps
“I was a timid little guy when I was a kid. I used humor as a defense; I became the class clown. But deep inside, I felt real vulnerable.”
― Mike Huckabee
“They don’t make you pay for the humor. It’s up and down, but they’re trying to give you as many laughs as possible in 2 minutes. They are the most honest comedians ever.”
― Mike Judge
“When I started the ‘Hellboy’ series way back when, I wasn’t really thinking consciously about the humor, but Hellboy does have my personality, and that’s an important part of my personality.”
― Mike Mignola
“I think the main thing about comedy and humor is that it’s impossible and always was impossible to define.”
― Mike Nichols
“That’s what I’m attracted to: how people face struggle – with humor – and how they handle tough situations in their lives and in conversations.”
― Mike O’Malley
“The thing that makes ‘Dirty Jobs’ different is that it’s one of the few shows that portrays work in a way that doesn’t highlight the drudgery. Instead, it highlights the humor.”
― Mike Rowe
“Evangelicals always assume that humor and faith are contradictory. It’s OK to smile, to be nice, but not frivolous.”
― Mike Yaconelli
“Humor was not important only for me, humor was important for this nation for centuries, to survive, you know.”
― Milos Forman
“Laughter is an instant vacation.”
― Milton Berle
“There’s a film I did years ago, ‘Love Serenade,’ that I still really love. It’s such an oddball sense of humor. It was a really special film for me when I did it.”
― Miranda Otto
“I love practical jokes and humor. That there’s frankly no joke that I don’t think is funny. I love practical jokes, but I don’t like being scared.”
― Mitt Romney
“I have five boys in the family, and it’s constant competition, sport, humor, and practical jokes.”
― Mitt Romney
“I met Elton John at an Interview dinner, and we just sort of became friends. He’s got such a wicked sense of humor.”
― Moby
“The duty of comedy is to correct men by amusing them.”
― Moliere
“I was that weird kid that checked out all of the non-fiction paranormal studies books from the library. I’ve always been fascinated by the supernatural, particularly movies and TV shows that manage to blend humor with the horror – ‘Supernatural’, ‘Buffy’, ‘Angel.’”
― Molly Harper
“One seldom expects the country’s president to adequately note the passing of a rocker, but Jimmy Carter’s assessment of Elvis Presley’s appeal – ‘energy, rebelliousness and good humor’ – is remarkably close to the mark.”
― Molly Ivins
“I never think I want to try to be funny. And humor, if there is anything funny, should come from a real place.”
― Molly Shannon
“Professional comedians, surprisingly, have a lack of humor. They’re insensitive to the insanity of our times.”
― Mort Sahl
“I didn’t think that anything is beyond humor – not profane humor, but a good, honest approach to humor.”
― Mort Sahl
“My humor was Victorian – and still is.”
― Mort Sahl
“Humor strips dominated what were called the funny papers early in the century, but by the 1920s and ’30s, adventure strips had taken over. With ‘Beetle Bailey,’ I revived the funny part of the funny papers, and I’d be proud to be remembered for that.”
― Mort Walker
“Using humor as a wedge into different kinds of stories is my go-to. I think anything I do would have some sort of streak of humor in it.”
― Nahnatchka Khan
“Some people don’t have a sense of humor about certain things, and other people do.”
― Nahnatchka Khan
“The Good Humor man can only be pushed so far.”
― Nancy Cartwright
“I’m not just a big-haired redhead country singer who dresses flamboyantly, has this wicked sense of humor and wears rhinestones.”
― Naomi Judd
“For me, humor was always my passport into new communities.”
― Natasha Rothwell
“As a kid, I loved ‘Godot’ because of the poetry and the humor and the strangeness, but then as you get older, it’s much more resonant.”
― Nathan Lane
“Humor is the ability to see three sides to one coin.”
― Ned Rorem
“G.I. humor is similar to cop humor.”
― Nelson DeMille
“I was born in England – though both of my parents are American – and there’s something about the ‘Muppets’ where they have this combination of English and American humor.”
― Nicholas Stoller
“I’ll speak for myself, but there’s a lot of humor to be found in sarcasm and darkness. You talk to any paramedic, they survive by developing a pretty off-kilter sense of humor.”
― Nicolas Cage
“I find intelligence sexy. I find a sense of humor sexy. I find sensitivity sexy.”
― Nicole Appleton
“My humor is a lot like Kristen Wiig’s from ‘Saturday Night Live’ or ‘Bridesmaids.’ Quirky, off the beaten path.”
― Nicole Ari Parker
“I think films about men are often about characters who don’t want to express their feelings. You’re supposed to kind of admire them for not expressing their feelings. And I feel that’s a bit dull. Women’s stories often have stronger emotional content, which I enjoy doing. What I really love doing is mixing that with humor.”
― Nigel Cole
“As far as how I approach the humor, I think the best comedy is going to happen when I’m myself and act organically to a news item or situation.”
― Nikki Glaser
“All my relatives and friends have been pretty aware of my brand of humor for a while, so none of them have been shocked.”
― Nikki Glaser
“I like guys with a sense of humor who smile a lot and are kind.”
― Nikki Glaser
“You either have chemistry or you don’t, but a lot of what attracts me is a guy’s mind and humor and talent. I need to get to know all those things before I fall for someone.”
― Nina Dobrev
“’Scorpion’ has so much humor and so much heart and a great deal of action.”
― Nina Tassler
“But it also became the experience, or was the experience, of the writers who were attracted to this kind of humor. They’re all men or women who come from the same kind of experience in their own lives.”
― Norman Lear
“The best way to make your audience laugh is to start laughing yourself.”
― Oliver Goldsmith
“I have a dark sense of humor.”
― Olivia Munn
“I find that I’m extremely unattracted to anything that’s humorless. There is writing that is entirely serious, and it doesn’t ring true to me, because I think, oftentimes, life is very, very funny. Even the worst, most humiliating, savage disappointments in retrospect have elements of bleak humor.”
― Owen King
“Teasing and a sense of humor, if you can develop that in your kids, and if you can exercise it with the kids, just makes for a pleasanter atmosphere.”
― P. J. O’Rourke
“I think that humor has become a principle means of communication among Americans about politics.”
― P. J. O’Rourke
“You need to talk about sex with a sense of humor, especially because sex is a sensitive area for a lot of people.”
― Paige Turco
“I need to end up with someone who is strong, intelligent, independent, someone I really admire – sensitive, sensuous, warm, a sense of humor.”
― Pam Dawber
“The French aren’t known for being hilarious. When I told Parisians I was interested in French humor, they’d say ‘French what?’”
― Pamela Druckerman
“I’ve dated girls that aren’t, this is gonna sound so horrible, that aren’t super smart, but they still are super confident, and that’s more what I’ve been attracted to is the confidence and the sense of humor.”
― Parker Young
“Humor is an antidote to all ills.”
― Patch Adams
“I think it would be hard to go the distance in this business without a sense of humor.”
― Patricia Clarkson
“Robert Walker as Bruno was excellent. He had elegance and humor, and the proper fondness for his mother.”
― Patricia Highsmith
“I was intentionally curbing the impulse to be funny and hiding the ability. I wrote any number of very serious attempts at poems, short stories, novels – horrible. At a certain point, I recognized that it was fun to write dialogue that had a degree of lightness and humor.”
― Patrick deWitt
“All I try to do is as earnestly and as acutely as I can, conceive a character and try to portray this character just honestly. If the humor is within the absurdity and the awfulness of situations, then let it be seen that way.”
― Patrick Warburton
“With actors like Steve McQueen, Paul Newman and Harrison Ford, what made them such icons is that even in dramatic movies, their characters had a sense of humor.”
― Patrick Wilson
“To me, Ann Romney sounds like a better candidate than her husband. She put her MS into remission through horseback riding, alternative therapies, and a healthy diet. She knows how to pace herself. She has a sense of humor and an innate honesty, and her hair moves in the wind. Maybe she should run.”
― Patti Davis
“People with no humor, they’re outta my life.”
― Patti LaBelle
“I have great respect for my parents. I got such beautiful things from both of them. It doesn’t mean that we didn’t have our rough times, but they were remarkable people who were open-minded, creative and hard-working, and had great senses of humor.”
― Patti Smith
“Without a sense of humor, I would have been gone a long time ago.”
― Patty Duke
“Quite often, intent on conveying how things can go wrong for a culture (science fiction) or an individual (horror) or all of magical creation (fantasy), works of fantastika often preclude comedy, because humor gets in the way of messages of doom or struggle.”
― Paul Di Filippo
“Bruce Wayne needs a sense of humor to do his job. Batman, for a very long time, was going to a very dark place.”
― Paul Dini
“What’s great about the geek spirit is that life never seems to stop us, and they never seem to kill our enthusiasm, our optimism and our hunger to experience the world. We keep our sense of humor, we protect our dignity, we talk to our friends about the experience and then we start again fresh the very next day.”
― Paul Feig
“Women’s humor seems to be a little more supportive. It’s just kind of trying to make the other one laugh through funny voices and kind of talking about other people. I respond to that. I feel less like I’m going to get beat up in a room full of women than I do in a room full of guys.”
― Paul Feig
“And I loved Fats Waller. I love his instrumental abilities, his vocal abilities and his sense of humor.”
― Paul McCartney
“I got my sense of humor from my grandmother. You know, my grandmother was very funny.”
― Paul Mooney
“Humor is the most important thing in life. It trumps everything else, and it’s the only thing that helps me deal with everything else.”
― Paul Rudd
“If you watch most of the stuff on TV and in movies, it’s usually put-down humor. It’s like somebody being mean or cynical or thoughtless to another person. I never wanted to be that type of comedian.”
― Paul Rust
“If you can get humor and seriousness at the same time, you’ve created a special little thing, and that’s what I’m looking for, because if you get pompous, you lose everything.”
― Paul Simon
“I used to watch ‘The Waltons’ and sob because my family was nothing like that. We had a cruel sense of humor in my family.”
― Paula Poundstone
“I have a very silly sense of humor. I’ve never laughed harder in my entire life than seeing someone with toilet paper stuck on the bottom of their shoe.”
― Paula Poundstone
“The satirist shoots to kill while the humorist brings his prey back alive and eventually releases him again for another chance.”
― Peter De Vries
“Women respond to comfort and a sense of humor. I was always able to make them laugh, so that helps a lot.”
― Peter Dinklage
“I have a need to always make people laugh. I have a desperate need. I love a great sense of humor. The people I sort of surround myself with have that.”
― Peter Dinklage
“I’m a Larry David fan, right? And it seems to me that Jewish history from the Talmud on has been a self-deprecating, self-critical kind of humor.”
― Peter Eisenman
“I don’t think that because you die and move on to somewhere else that you lose your sense of humor.”
― Peter Jackson
“Always have a sense of humor about life – you’ll need it – but always be courteous to boot.”
― Peter Jennings
“I think superheroes are heroes with flaws, and in their flaws, there is a sense of humor.”
― Peter Segal
“As far as humor goes, I’ve always been a very insecure person and I’ve always wanted to be liked.”
― Peter Steele
“Well, darkness with humor… I’m not an extremely suicidal or sad person.”
― Peter Steele
“My dad is just like everybody else’s dad. I see him as kind of a goofy guy with a great sense of humor. I try to get in a battle of wits with him, but he always gets me. I emulate him because I’ve never seen anyone work as hard as he does.”
― Peter Uihlein
“Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.”
― Peter Ustinov
“People always ask me how I manage to find humor in so much bleakness. I think this is almost a necessary skill to have.”
― Petina Gappah
“Every once in a while, friends leave sarcastic comments on photos. I know they’re joking, but the sarcastic humor doesn’t always translate well when I am sitting behind my screen reading it. In person, it’s easier to play it off as a joke, but online, it can come across as offensive.”
― Peyton List
“I’ve heard too many times where people say that I’m this ultra-serious guy. In truth, I’ve got an extremely absurd sense of humor. I thrive on the absurd – I love it.”
― Phil Anselmo
“People ask me what the most important thing to take on the race is, and I always say it’s a sense of humor. If you’ve got nothing but a sense of humor, you will survive.”
― Phil Keoghan
“I’m very confident that Nick Hornby always gets it right as a writer. He has the vernacular and passion. He is adroit and dry, and balances humor with the humanity of life.”
― Pierce Brosnan
“As a person, he was wonderful. He really was a great person. He was full of life. He had a great sense of humor. Very talented, of course, but very caring to his parents. There was a very endearing quality about Elvis.”
― Priscilla Presley
“I don’t think that I could have survived in my family without a naughty sense of humor; yeah, absolutely. I think my brother and I both get our senses of humor from our parents. I mean, my mother was absolutely hilarious and foul. She had the most ridiculously off color sense of humor, so that was sort of what we grew up with.”
― Rachael MacFarlane
“It’s continuously humbling to work hard, you know? As long as you’ve got a good work ethic and a sense of humor, I don’t think anybody can become too much of an egoist under those circumstances.”
― Rachael Ray
“I wish I could be as thin as Jessica Simpson. I think she looks gorgeous! I have had Jessica on my show several times, and I can tell you that girl is genuine and funny with a great self-deprecating sense of humor.”
― Rachael Ray
“I’m a comedian, and I have my share of anxiety and depression; so do most of my friends. My humor tends to lie in the juxtaposition of extreme lightness – I’m a huge musical-theater fan – and extreme darkness. And so I really like playing with those because that’s how I feel.”
― Rachel Bloom
“If it gets laughs, it’s funny.”
― Rachel Dratch
“I like being a Baha’i who has an out-there sense of humor. God gives us talents and faculties, and making people laugh is one of mine.”
― Rainn Wilson
“I think God has a tremendous sense of humor.”
― Rainn Wilson
“One of the things that binds us as a family is a shared sense of humor.”
― Ralph Fiennes
“To me, in life, if you have a sense of humor about it, that’s how you deal with anything.”
― Ralph Macchio
“People are wired for lots of things. We’re wired for novelty. We’re wired for humor. We’re wired for new pieces of information that surprise us in some way or add value to our lives. We’re wired for fear.”
― Ramez Naam
“If you’re a content creator looking to elicit a certain emotion, we can validate that. In cases where an ad is trying to elicit humor, we can tell you if people get the jokes or not by the number of people who smile, the intensity of the smile, and the timing of the smile.”
― Rana el Kaliouby
“I would love to do a film with a lot of humor in it: a comedy with pain instead of a painful film with some comedy.”
― Randa Haines
“I don’t have hard numbers about this, but the impression I get is that the amount of eyeballs you get from being on the humor shelf at Barnes & Noble – it is almost insignificant.”
― Randall Munroe
“It used to be if you wanted to do a newspaper comic, you had to appeal to a pretty big chunk of the newspaper’s readership for them to want to keep you around. ‘Dilbert’ would be office humor, but even that is pretty widely experienced.”
― Randall Munroe
“While many of us never knew Ronald Reagan personally, we felt close to him because we shared his lighthearted sense of humor, admired his uncommon virtue, and were moved by his remarkable wisdom.”
― Randy Forbes
“The whole ability to look at the complexity of race and any sort of associated -ism and still find humor, that’s a very interesting space.”
― Rashid Johnson
“The comics that are just conversing with you up there and drawing on their own life, yeah, I guess so. I guess some do political humor, some do topical humor, but the ones that I like, the ones that are appealing to me, were guys who were just talking to you about their life.”
― Ray Romano
“If golf wasn’t enjoyable and there wasn’t a lot of humor and enjoyment, even though the game is so frustrating, you would wonder why you put yourself through it.”
― Ray Romano
“Humor is a very important thing. It is a natural predilection. It is an emotional release.”
― Ray Stevenson
“In high drama or high tragedy or anything, it’s not really human unless there’s some humor at the same time. And vice versa. So I guess I tend to gravitate towards projects which tread a dodgy tightrope between two things, which aren’t really one or another.”
― Rebecca Hall
“The times I’ve tried not to be funny, it’s never worked, and the times I’m trying not to be dark and just be funny, that never works, either. As varied as my subject matter is, I think the worldview is pretty consistent: seeing darkness and seeing humor.”
― Rebecca Makkai
“I’m not for gratuitous nudity, but if there’s humor, I don’t have a problem.”
― Rebecca Romijn
“Sometimes I make myself laugh, but that’s because I appreciate my sense of humor.”
― Regina Hall
“I like Strahan a lot. I’ve known him for years. He was a Giant here – in many ways. Had a big following with the New York Giants. He’s very funny. He’s got a great sense of humor.”
― Regis Philbin
“I was always silly in high school. I used to always get in trouble because I was laughing. I’ve always thought I was funny but never thought I could use it to make money. In 1996, I decided I was going to use my humor to get on TV to make money.”
― Retta
“All the people I looked up to – Roseanne, Tim Allen, and Jerry Seinfeld – were stand-up comedians who used humor to get TV shows. I’m on TV now, and I’m working towards getting my own show.”
― Retta
“When I started out, it was around the whole 9/11 – Islamophobia was just sort of hitting a second wind. Obviously that informed a lot of my humor, and it influenced a lot of what I was talking about on stage because it was extremely relevant at the time.”
― Riaad Moosa
“The Muslims in the Cape are associated with having a very good sense of humor.”
― Riaad Moosa
“I think bands, when they’re on the road, they keep their sanity by developing an internal sense of humor.”
― Ric Ocasek
“It took me a while to figure out the U.S. sense of humor, a lot of trial and error. I would write down jokes to casually tell my American friend over Skype to see which ones he’d laugh at.”
― Rich Brian
“Indonesian people don’t get satire; that’s the thing. There’s no thought in our humor.”
― Rich Brian
“We moved to America when I was young, but we were always very Welsh in our home. The humor, food, traditions. Very Welsh.”
― Richard Brake
“If you are a small company taking on a big company, you need to have a sense of humor.”
― Richard Branson
“If you look back, Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven were mixing music and humor all the time.”
― Richard Hyung-ki Joo
“I think the humor of double puns is incredible.”
― Richard Lederer
“I never wanted to do observational humor because I never wanted to tell people what they were seeing.”
― Richard Lewis
“My humor is channeling everything through my brain. For example, when I talk about something, it’s how Richard Lewis feels about it. I’m a storyteller. I do a lot of free association.”
― Richard Lewis
“Whether it’s viewers of the show or readers of my columns and books, I’m consistently impressed with their wit, humor and insight. That goes for about 95 percent of the audience. The other five percent are why the ‘Delete’ option and restraining orders were invented.”
― Richard Roeper
“At the risk of appearing disingenuous, I don’t really think of myself as ‘writing humor.’ I’m simply reporting on the world I observe, which is frequently hilarious.”
― Richard Russo
“I never worry about people not taking my work seriously as a result of the humor. In the end, the comic’s best trick is the illusion that comedy is effortless. That people imagine what he’s doing is easy is an occupational hazard.”
― Richard Russo
“I think kids want the same thing from a book that adults want – a fast-paced story, characters worth caring about, humor, surprises, and mystery. A good book always keeps you asking questions, and makes you keep turning pages so you can find out the answers.”
― Rick Riordan
“When I was young, my favorite picture book was ‘Fletcher and Zenobia,’ written by Edward Gorey and illustrated by Victoria Chess. It’s long out of print now, but its mix of macabre humor and 1960s psychedelia made it a perfect children’s book for the times.”
― Rick Riordan
“Humor is to get us over terrible things.”
― Ricky Gervais
“Sometimes I find I’m wearing a divided, split brain in terms of drama and humor.”
― Ridley Scott
“Humor comes from self-confidence.”
― Rita Mae Brown
“There are different kinds of humor, some is sarcastic, some introspective. Introspective fit my personality better.”
― Rita Rudner
“I wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, and I wasn’t the biggest, so I got real good at running my mouth and making people laugh and using humor as a way to not get into fights.”
― Rob Riggle
“Reading ‘Youth in Revolt’ might have ruined my career because suddenly I wanted to abandon all the emotional truth of something and just go out far on a literary limb with completely implausible things that relied completely on voice and humor. And what saved me is realizing that I couldn’t do that very well.”
― Rob Thomas
“I have an incredibly dry sense of humor.”
― Rob Van Dam
“Maybe there’s a chance to get back to grown-up films. Anything that uses humor and dramatic values to deal with human emotions and gets down to what people are to people.”
― Robert Altman
“There seems to be no lengths to which humorless people will not go to analyze humor. It seems to worry them.”
― Robert Benchley
“I like girls who are funny with a warped sense of humor.”
― Robert Buckley
“Our subconscious minds have no sense of humor, play no jokes and cannot tell the difference between reality and an imagined thought or image. What we continually think about eventually will manifest in our lives.”
― Robert Collier
“Humor is the most engaging cowardice.”
― Robert Frost
“Comedy is still alive, and there are still funny people. Jews are still overrepresented in comedy and psychiatry and underrepresented in the priesthood. That immigrant Jewish humor is still with us.”
― Robert Klein
“Nothing like a little judicious levity.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson
“There’s public humor, and there’s private humor, and they’re all appropriate in their own way, and you shouldn’t – just as you wouldn’t have a megaphone and say certain things that you would say around your friends – things that are perfectly all right within your close social group with whom you share a certain context.”
― Robert Mankoff
“Humor levels the playing field. I understood that early on – that was something I had.”
― Robert Mankoff
“The interesting thing about humor is that in humor, you – in logic, something is A or not A. In humor, it’s both A and not A.”
― Robert Mankoff
“The line between humor and bad taste is your audience, in which some people will find everything offensive, and some people will find nothing offensive, but the truth is that most humor originates in what would be called bad taste.”
― Robert Mankoff
“One question about a joke is, how well is the strangeness of the situation resolved? At ‘The New Yorker’, we retain a lot of incongruity, tapping the playful part of the mind – Monty Python-type stuff. We also try to use humor as a vehicle for communicating ideas. Not editorial comment, but observation.”
― Robert Mankoff
“Philip Larkin has a tough honesty and sense of humor that I find irresistible, as a contemporary poet.”
― Robert Morgan
“In prehistoric times, mankind often had only two choices in crisis situations: fight or flee. In modern times, humor offers us a third alternative; fight, flee – or laugh.”
― Robert Orben
“Humor starts like a wildfire, but then continues on, smoldering, smoldering for years.”
― Robert Orben
“President Ford used humor a great deal.”
― Robert Orben
“I remember when humor was gentle pokes. I used to call it ‘arm around the shoulder’ humor. Now they go for the jugular and they take no prisoners. It’s mean, mean stuff.”
― Robert Orben
“For me, the ideal job as an actor would be something that is intrinsically a drama but to which I could bring in as much humor as possible.”
― Robert Picardo
“’Trek’ is probably more cerebral and philosophical. ‘Stargate’ does seat-of-the-pants adventure and humor better.”
― Robert Picardo
“’Star Trek’ tends to take itself a little too seriously. They were either very dramatic shows, or if we did a humorous show, it was always a little like, ‘Oh, we’re doing humor on ‘Star Trek,” especially on the original series.”
― Robert Picardo
“A boy is naturally full of humor.”
― Robert Powell
“The love of truth lies at the root of much humor.”
― Robertson Davies
“If you can appeal to another person’s sense of humor, you can introduce ideas, thoughts, things that they may disagree with or not believe in. At least they’ll listen.”
― Rocky Carroll
“I suppose I miss the British cynicism and the humor.”
― Rod Stewart
“I love Sell Out, I think it’s great. I love the jingles. The whole thing as an album is a wonderful piece of work. The cover. Everything about it. It’s got humor, great songs, irony.”
― Roger Daltrey
“Tony and I had a good on and off screen relationship, we are two very different people, but we did share a sense of humor, we now live in different parts of the world but when we find ourselves in the same place it is more or less as if there had been no years in between.”
― Roger Moore
“Humor helps people open up.”
― Roger von Oech
“Humor is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man’s superiority to all that befalls him.”
― Romain Gary
“I definitely need a girl that has a good sense of humor because there are some girls that are just very uptight.”
― Romeo Santos
“I look at things logically. The humor I do is to go from A to B to C to D, and F is the funny.”
― Ron Shock
“A lot of people can find something to laugh at in my humor, I guess.”
― Ron White
“With Irish drama, things are told with humor.”
― Rory O’Malley
“There is humor in the darkest of moments – People who I have loved and passed away, and very high stake situations where you can’t help but laugh. I think that’s very human.”
― Rose McIver
“And, you know, I liked writing humor. Well, I should say, I wanted to write seriously, but it kept turning funny.”
― Roseanne Barr
“It’s an amusing idea to some, this feminism thing – this audacious notion that women should be able to move through the world as freely, and enjoy the same inalienable rights and bodily autonomy, as men. At least, that’s the impression given when feminism and feminists are all too often the targets of lazy humor.”
― Roxane Gay
“People may think of Southern humor in terms of missing teeth and outhouse accidents, but the best of it is a rich vein running through the best of Southern literature.”
― Roy Blount, Jr.
“Think about scary movies: There’s a fine line between horror and humor.”
― Roy Blount, Jr.
“Humor is a blessing to me. My earliest recollections are of looking at something and seeing the lighter side. But it’s always spontaneous. I couldn’t write a comedy skit for someone else.”
― Roy Clark
“You hear people say, ‘We take our Tennessee Williams very seriously. There is no laughter here.’ It’s full of humor! Not to laugh is a big, bad mistake!”
― Ruby Dee
“Newspaper people, once celebrated as founts of ribald humor and uncouth fun, have of late lost all their gaiety, and small wonder.”
― Russell Baker
“I talk about race and culture, and that’s what my fans respond to. If you grew up in an environment where race and culture were never an issue for you, or where you don’t see the humor in our so-called differences, then you might not respond to what I’m doing.”
― Russell Peters
“I don’t know if my sense of humor goes over Americans’ heads.”
― Ryan Kwanten
“We have to have humor to survive 22 episodes a year of network television.”
― Sallie Patrick
“I couldn’t really take a girl from Berlin to live in Leeds. I love it here. I miss the Yorkshire sense of humor and things like bitter and Yorkshire puddings, but I can still get my hands on salt ‘n’ vinegar crisps.”
― Sam Riley
“Celebrate your successes. Find some humor in your failures.”
― Sam Walton
“I’m an off-the-charts introvert. To me, being around groups of strangers is exhausting. I’ve had to sort of train myself to think about two tactics: finding common ground and invoking humor.”
― Sam Yagan
“Rowling is a luminous storyteller. I love her sense of humor and the intricate wizarding world she built around Hogwarts. I think all writers aspire to be like her, to capture readers like she does. But I didn’t think about ‘Harry Potter’ when I wrote ‘The Bone Season.’”
― Samantha Shannon
“A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those worth committing.”
― Samuel Butler
“Married people should not be quick to hear what is said by either when in ill humor.”
― Samuel Richardson
“From sixteen to twenty, all women, kept in humor by their hopes and by their attractions, appear to be good-natured.”
― Samuel Richardson
“No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“People of humor are always in some degree people of genius.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“Poop humor is fun. If you do the toilet scenes well and commit to them, they can be really, really powerful.”
― Sandra Bullock
“I feel like I don’t really have a sense of humor… I don’t know if I could characterize it dark or light. I just – I do like humor.”
― Sandra Oh
“I think it’s because it’s so different and it takes risks. Plus, it’s really smart humor. It gives the audience credit in terms of not needing to tell them when to laugh. I love that about the show. There’s no laugh track.”
― Sarah Chalke
“I’m a sarcastic person, and people don’t get my humor sometimes.”
― Sarah Hyland
“Some people say my humor focuses too much on stereotypes. It doesn’t. It focuses on facts.”
― Sarah Silverman
“There’s such a rich history in ‘SNL’ of political humor, and I think audience members expect that from us.”
― Sasheer Zamata
“I use a lot of humor, and I follow the saying that if you want to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh first; otherwise, they will shoot you.”
― Sayed Kashua
“It doesn’t take many people to have a bad sense of humor to get in trouble at a corporation.”
― Scott Adams
“I came into the ‘Comedy Bang! Bang!’ TV show with a level of confidence that I don’t think I would’ve had if I hadn’t been doing the podcast for three years already. I certainly had to figure out in those three years the sense of humor I wanted to do and the way to talk to celebrities without being incredibly intimidated by them.”
― Scott Aukerman
“I think the Canadian sense of humor is dryer than America’s and juicier than Britain’s. I think it’s a cross between the two of them, really.”
― Scott Thompson
“I think Canadian humor is a little less broad than American humor.”
― Scott Thompson
“Most of the characters in ‘The Little Rascals’ were living in poverty, but they decided to focus on the joy of being a kid: the humor, the heart, the resilience.”
― Sean Baker
“In our most desperate times, people going through true hardships use humor to cope.”
― Sean Baker
“You don’t necessarily equate me with humor!”
― Sean Bean
“Bathroom humor, fart, and poo poo humor in movies gets a laugh. It’s a pretty easy audience, and that’s been around for ages.”
― Selma Blair
“Suspense is very important. Even though this is humor and they’re short stories, that theory of building suspense is still there.”
― Sergio Aragones
“But if you read Jane Austen, you know that she had a wicked sense of humor. Not only was she funny, but her early writing was very dark and had a gothic tone to it.”
― Seth Grahame-Smith
“Everybody in my family had a real sick, twisted sense of humor. Most of the jokes we make in our house, we would just never even dream of making anywhere else. Just sick, horrible stuff. That wasn’t anything new to college.”
― Seth MacFarlane
“Denzel Washington has a great sense of humor. He did all those ‘Nutty Professor’ movies.”
― Seth MacFarlane
“We have always had gross humor. But we try for funny, not gross.”
― Shawn Wayans
“With any character I play, I gravitate to the juxtaposition and humor.”
― Shawnee Smith
“Stand-up comics reflect less of a visual humor and more of a commentary.”
― Shel Silverstein
“I am in the Master of Professional Writing program teaching Humor Writing, Literary and Dramatic.”
― Shelley Berman
“I don’t think I could ever do a network sitcom because the humor is often based on some trite circumstance. I don’t want to be a part of a show where it’s mostly about coming up with the jokes.”
― Sherilyn Fenn
“A lot of people say, ‘Hey, God doesn’t have a sense of humor.’ Yes, He does. God has a great sense of humor.”
― Si Robertson
“Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end.”
― Sid Caesar
“In my first story, ‘Mr. Mysterious & Company’… I was asked to take out some of the humor because editors were afraid reviewers would dismiss the book as a joke. Today, humor is enjoyed and no longer regarded as literary brummagem.”
― Sid Fleischman
“Total absence of humor renders life impossible.”
― Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
“I have always found humor in places where humor wasn’t necessarily intended.”
― Silas Weir Mitchell
“I’m not a traditional politician, and I have a sense of humor. I’ll try to soften it and become boring, maybe even very boring, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to.”
― Silvio Berlusconi
“I mean, yeah, I’m sure that Python and the other things have paved the way for a greater understanding of the British sense of humor, but I don’t think it’s all that different than the American sense of humor.”
― Simon Pegg
“I think at its best the American sense of humor is the same as the British sense of humor at its best, which is to be wry and ironic and self deprecating.”
― Simon Pegg
“Humour is the weapon of unarmed people: it helps people who are oppressed to smile at the situation that pains them.”
― Simon Wiesenthal
“There are two insults no human being will endure: that he has no sense of humor, and that he has never known trouble.”
― Sinclair Lewis
“Humor is the truth; wit is an exaggeration of the truth.”
― Stan Laurel
“Deadpool was always one of my favorite characters because of the way he handles all kinds of situations. His style and humor make him the perfect antihero.”
― Stefan Kapicic
“If somebody is not on the same page with me humor wise, I can’t give them that.”
― Stephan Pastis
“Brits have a better sense of humor in most ways. It’s darker, more cutting.”
― Stephan Pastis
“Maybe the bar is low, but most of the strips that are 50, 60, 70 years old that are on their second or third generation of artists, the humor is pretty bland. There are others by people that were raised on ‘Family Guy’ or ‘South Park’ that are edgier. Mine’s not as edgy as those, but it’s edgier than ‘Beetle Bailey.’”
― Stephan Pastis
“Thomas, my 15-year-old, is effectively my editor, I’ve always trusted his voice, more than anybody, on the strip for years. He has one of those ears that’s just tuned to the rhythm of humor, so if he says something’s not funny, my stomach just hurts because I know he’s right, and it’s already been drawn.”
― Stephan Pastis
“Since I became a knitting humor writer, I seem to be understood a little better – at least for the purposes of social discourse.”
― Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
“The way humor’s usually used in horror, it’s as a pressure-release valve; without it, the drama would escalate out of all control almost immediately.”
― Stephen Graham Jones
“Keeping an active mind has been vital to my survival, as has been maintaining a sense of humor.”
― Stephen Hawking
“The characters are likable. Even the villainous Plankton – he’s still flawed, and you still root for him, in a way, and the style of humor is simple, and it’s about human behavior, and everybody can identify with that.”
― Stephen Hillenburg
“Our characters act silly, even totally ridiculous at times, and most of our jokes don’t come out of pop cultural references. It seems like we’re aiming at a child audience, but everyone can laugh at the basic human traits that are funny. It’s playful, the humor is playful, the world is playful. You can kind of let go.”
― Stephen Hillenburg
“I’m hoping that fans will enjoy finally having a ‘SpongeBob’ comic book from me. All the stories will be original and always true to the humor, characters, and universe of the ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ series.”
― Stephen Hillenburg
“We wanted the humor to come from the characters and their world – you go down there to escape the world up here for a while. So when the crew would write jokes that would refer to American TV or culture, I’d just eliminate them because it just seemed odd that SpongeBob would know about it.”
― Stephen Hillenburg
“I always pushed back on doing long-form. I imagined SpongeBob as being simple, and I wanted to concentrate on character humor.”
― Stephen Hillenburg
“SpongeBob is a complete innocent – not an idiot. SpongeBob never fully realizes how stupid Patrick is. They’re whipping themselves up into situations – that’s always where the humor comes from.”
― Stephen Hillenburg
“I love ‘Dexter.’ The dark sense of humor is wonderful.”
― Stephen J. Cannell
“The best scary movies have great humor in them and a great story.”
― Stephen Sommers
“Humor is a social lubricant that helps us get over some of the bad spots.”
― Steve Allen
“We will take almost any kind of criticism except the observation that we have no sense of humor.”
― Steve Allen
“If we do not know what humor is, that may be because we do not know what humankind is.”
― Steve Allen
“Much of the best humor is found in the frequently tragic reality of human experience.”
― Steve Allen
“I read the script and decide if a particular character looks fun to play. I look for complexity and a sense of humor. Those are crucial, real things to life.”
― Steve Buscemi
“I just like playing interesting, complex, complicated characters. I like films that also have an element of humor.”
― Steve Buscemi
“I don’t think of myself as funny – I don’t fill up a room with my humor… I would fail miserably as a stand-up comedian.”
― Steve Carell
“You know, I’m Australian, and we have got the worst sense of humor. We are cruel to each other.”
― Steve Irwin
“I met Woz when I was 13, at a friend’s garage. He was about 18. He was, like, the first person I met who knew more electronics than I did at that point. We became good friends, because we shared an interest in computers and we had a sense of humor. We pulled all kinds of pranks together.”
― Steve Jobs
“I’m a weird guy with a weird sense of humor.”
― Steve Lukather
“We’ve always had a sense of humor – look at our name.”
― Steve Lukather
“Art Modell was a visionary, a deal-maker and a friend. And he possessed a marvelous sense of humor.”
― Steve Tisch
“I always gravitate toward the humor in something.”
― Steve Zahn
“’Hill Street,’ because of the wacky nature of many of our characters, really allowed us to indulge a kind of cheek-to-jowl juxtaposition of high drama with very low humor.”
― Steven Bochco
“Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time.”
― Steven Wright
“You know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That’s what I do. The branches are like life, and I throw them into my head and some of it comes out as humor.”
― Steven Wright
“I like George Carlin’s jokes. I like his humor. He’s one of my heroes, and I like what he did with talking about everyday things.”
― Steven Wright
“I actually have a pretty good sense of humor.”
― Stone Cold Steve Austin
“I was a heathen Jewess with no bat mitzvah. Only the neurosis, the brown hair, and the self-deprecating humor. But being one of the only Jewish kids in my WASPy hometown definitely informed my perspective on the humor of being an outsider.”
― Susanna Fogel
“I love watching action films, and especially the little moments of wit and humor in the choreography in a lot of them. The editing of an action sequence often has great moments of comic timing.”
― Susanna Fogel
“Micro humor is a joke that’s contained in the writing: it’s a punch line, it’s a turn of phrase, it’s something that you can see on the page, and no matter who’s saying it, it is, in and of itself, a funny line.”
― Susanna Fogel
“Macro humor is just a person being themselves in a situation, saying whatever they’re going to say, and it’s funny because of the situation and who they are, or they say something, and it’s just so them.”
― Susanna Fogel
“I try to write from a place of writing what I know, and what I know is interesting and appropriate women with edgy senses of humor. They’re not soft people, so why are all the movies about women soft? My friends are all blazing their own paths. Some are married with kids, but a lot of them aren’t. Some of them don’t want that life.”
― Susanna Fogel
“I love Nicole Holofcener’s films for their constant duality of humor and emotion and their focus on very real, if flawed, dynamics between funny people.”
― Susanna Fogel
“I don’t feel that I’m strictly Danish; I don’t feel that my sense of humor is strictly Danish or my human sensibility is strictly Danish.”
― Susanne Bier
“Insult is powerful. Insult begets both rage and humor and often at the same time.”
― Suzanne Fields
“It’s just my natural way – to be funny. I don’t know why that is. But as I’ve said, humor is a quick cover for shock, horror, confusion. The critics hate funny writers for the most part. They think funny is not serious, but I think that funny can be even more serious than nonfunny. And it can be more affecting, too.”
― T. C. Boyle
“’Guardians of the Galaxy’ is tongue-in-cheek and has a sense of humor about itself. But it’s nothing like ‘Deadpool.’ ‘Deadpool’ is this super-bizarre thing. The best thing about it is that it’s R-rated.”
― T. J. Miller
“Rock Hudson wasn’t my type. He’s a great guy and had a great sense of humor.”
― Tab Hunter
“At NBC I wasn’t really sure if the grandparents were going to get my sense of humor on a particular topic.”
― Tabitha Soren
“I learned early in my career to not let myself get in the way of humor but, instead, find what is great in a talented person.”
― Tamra Davis
“I always had to genuinely like the actors I worked with and use my enthusiasm and vision to give them confidence to push their creativity and their humor.”
― Tamra Davis
“I am attracted to intelligence, a witty sense of humor, an adventurous outlook on life and spiritual awareness about one’s self and the world.”
― Tanit Phoenix
“I’m interested in people’s darkness – and humor in the darkness.”
― Tanya Saracho
“I really just love dumb humor. I watch a lot of SNL.”
― Taylor Louderman
“Life is tragic comedy, in a way. There is humor.”
― Tcheky Karyo
“Humor can bring people under the tent. And a good joke can deflect some of the intensity surrounding a serious subject.”
― Ted Danson
“When people are in the midst of really heavy stuff and still have a sense of humor, I admire that.”
― Ted Danson
“Conservative humor is frankly harder than liberal humor. You get points for just being liberal. You can get more points if you make fun of your own side sometimes.”
― Ted Rall
“If you get a diagnosis, get on a therapy, keep a good attitude and keep your sense of humor.”
― Teri Garr
“I think it’s critical, a sense of humor. It did help me – it does help me, continuously.”
― Teri Garr
“Sometimes the only way to make palatable that which is appalling and apprehensive is to season it with some humor.”
― Terrence Howard
“I’m actually a perpetual 13-year-old. I’ve never advanced beyond 13. Every day, tomorrow is my 14th birthday. That’s my kind of humor.”
― Terry Crews
“If you don’t infuse humor into a subject matter, no matter how dark, the audience can’t accept the message of a film. It closes them down. Humor can open them up.”
― Theodore Melfi
“Some major writers have a huge impact, like Ayn Rand, who to my mind is a lousy fiction writer because her writing has no compassion and virtually no humor. She has a philosophical and economical message that she is passing off as fiction, but it really isn’t fiction at all.”
― Theodore Sturgeon
“Spielberg read the ‘Understudy’ and decided that was the voice he wanted to write ‘Smash.’ He wanted a story that had humanity and humor and high-stakes dreams.”
― Theresa Rebeck
“I love the idea of things being strict and things being uniform. That’s the reason why I surround each collection with humor or irony. I want to make sure that it’s not too serious and that there is some element that throws it off because otherwise that would make it really boring. There’s always a story that’s somewhat fantastical.”
― Thom Browne
“Men live by intervals of reason under the sovereignty of humor and passion.”
― Thomas Browne
“True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.”
― Thomas Carlyle
“In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.”
― Thomas Jefferson
“I reread Mesrine’s book every year because the way the story is told is fascinating. Today, we don’t have gangsters like Mesrine – he had humor.”
― Thomas Langmann
“To my mind, a well-developed sense of humor is the surest indication of a person’s humanity, no matter how black and bitter that humor may be.”
― Thomas Ligotti
“My parents and my sister died… very close together, and after that, I lost quite a bit of my sense of humor. Most of it I think has kind of come back, but I know there was a time when I didn’t think things were funny anymore. I kind of think they’re funny again.”
― Thomas McGuane
“Great men are rarely isolated mountain peaks; they are the summits of ranges.”
― Thomas Wentworth Higginson
“There is no defense against adverse fortune which is so effectual as an habitual sense of humor.”
― Thomas Wentworth Higginson
“You can find humor in most things, and even terrible things.”
― Thundercat
“I kind of find humor in everything, even to the point where it’s awkward – like, the worst scenarios are the funniest things ever.”
― Thundercat
“I have a sick sense of humor. Like, I’m always laughing at my own pain.”
― Tierra Whack
“Love, as wonderful and horrible as it is, has at its center a kind of pitiful humor.”
― Tim O’Brien
“When humor works, it works because it’s clarifying what people already feel. It has to come from someplace real.”
― Tina Fey
“I feel like I’ve always had a sordid sense of humor, and it’s only gotten more twisted as I’ve gotten older.”
― Tituss Burgess
“There’s a hysterical, tired sense of humor that comes after working 14 hours a day, six days a week. I like those things because they take the pressure off the constant stress.”
― Tom Berenger
“Somebody says, ‘Do a Tom Bodett, a folksy kind of thing,’ and it sounds like something out of ‘Hee Haw,’ very insulting. They turn wry humor into disparaging sarcasm, and you get what amounts to insulting advertising.”
― Tom Bodett
“You’re not going to see my sense of humor on the football field. That’s not a place for me to joke around.”
― Tom Brady
“Humor has become so cliche and boring that nothing’s funny anymore unless it involves something totally disgusting that offends somebody or makes them feel really uncomfortable.”
― Tom DeLonge
“My dad read, I think, the Perry Mason mysteries and Zane Grey and some humor compendiums… And then at one point, the bookmobile started coming to town. That was really cool. I mean, that was when I read my first Raymond Carver story. I think that was probably 1969 or so. I must have been 13.”
― Tom Drury
“I’ve worked a lot in comedy. As much as I love playing dramatic roles, it’s always nice to be able to have some humor around when working.”
― Tom Ellis
“Lucifer has a sense of fun about life; he just likes to play with people. But the sense of humor of the show is what makes the show entertaining as opposed to dark.”
― Tom Ellis
“I’m incredibly proud to bring back ‘Tom Green Live’ for a third season on AXS TV. AXS TV’s commitment to unique, out-of-the-box humor, in a completely open and uncensored format, is unparalleled.”
― Tom Green
“Laughter is involuntary. If it’s funny you laugh.”
― Tom Lehrer
“Wit and playfulness represent a desperately serious transcendence of evil. Humor is both a form of wisdom and a means of survival.”
― Tom Robbins
“Jerry Seinfeld is amazing in many ways, not the least of them his ability to find humor, and convincing us to find it, too, in the million-and-two details about modern life that under different circumstances might send us into paroxysms of rage.”
― Tom Shales
“Working on newspapers, you’re writing to a certain length, often very brief pieces; you tend to look for easy forms of humor – women can’t drive, things like that. That’s about the level of a lot of newspaper humor. It becomes a form of laziness.”
― Tom Wolfe
“We are really living the American dream, to be a successful brand in the States and in Europe and to steep ourselves in our heritage. But we do it with a sense of humor. We don’t take ourselves too seriously in fashion.”
― Tommy Hilfiger
“I don’t think I would describe my sense of humor. Doesn’t sound like the kind of thing I’d do.”
― Tommy Lee Jones
“I do not have a sense of humor of any recognizable sort.”
― Tommy Lee Jones
“It’s just that, with comedy, the circumstances are just crazy-heightened, and you have these crazy things thrown at you. But you still have to do it truthfully, because that’s where the humor comes from.”
― Tony Hale
“I have been a big fan of the ‘Fast and the Furious’ franchise. The films are fast-paced, fun and keep the audience involved. There is a great mix of humor and action, something I really appreciate.”
― Tony Jaa
“My dad’s sense of humor was direct and sometimes surreal – his quick wit is well known amongst our family and friends. He raised me on Spike Jones records and W.C. Fields movies, and his sense of humor fell somewhere in between.”
― Tony Visconti
“I have a really dry sense of humor. I don’t think it’s funny when people wink at the camera. That’s more of an actor thing, just committing to whatever the thing is.”
― Topher Grace
“Because I was a television writer for many years, I write very conversationally. I put things straight, and with a lot of humor.”
― Tracy McMillan
“If I had to describe my sense of humor, I would say it’s contemporary wit, you know what I’m saying?”
― Tracy Morgan
“My sense of humor is a turkey, and I pull it out of the oven and baste it in reality.”
― Tracy Morgan
“I want to show the world my humor.”
― Tracy Morgan
“I am a great believer that what makes our show different is the humor.”
― Treat Williams
“Me and Matt love to argue, but in general our sense of humor is pretty much alike.”
― Trey Parker
“I’m strange! I have a weird sense of humor! I look crazy!”
― Trixie Mattel
“I think a sense of humor will help get a girl out of a dark place.”
― Twyla Tharp
“I wasn’t shy, but I was really hyper. Nobody got my sense of humor. I was a black skater kid.”
― Tyler, The Creator
“The comic is the perception of the opposite; humor is the feeling of it.”
― Umberto Eco
“I think drama and comedy are pretty much all the same, and the issue is whether or not you have a sense of humor.”
― Valerie Harper
“You feel like you need to deal with a lot if you’re from Cleveland, so you learn to let things roll off your back, and you learn that humor is the best way to deal with it.”
― Vanessa Bayer
“I don’t have a caustic sense of humor. What I find funny, that humor comes from a much gentler place.”
― Vera Farmiga
“I think God gave us senses of humor, and we should use them.”
― Vera Farmiga
“I go out and speak to women’s groups all the time, and I say, ‘Guys, you gotta laugh and find the humor in things. You gotta pass it on.’”
― Vicki Lawrence
“Laughter is the closest distance between two people.”
― Victor Borge
“Humor is something that thrives between man’s aspirations and his limitations. There is more logic in humor than in anything else. Because, you see, humor is truth.”
― Victor Borge
“’The Sundial’ is written with the kind of humor that would make a guillotine laugh.”
― Victor LaValle
“I think the sexiest thing about a woman is confidence, but confidence in a humble way, not in an arrogant way. Sense of humor is definitely important. And sunglasses always hide a multitude of sins. Sunglasses and a great pair of heels can turn most outfits around.”
― Victoria Beckham
“I like a man who can be a real friend, has a good sense of humor, a good pair of shoes and a healthy gold card.”
― Victoria Beckham
“You know, Freud accepted his lot very stoically and very well and with a sense of humor. He aged and died gracefully, and there’s a lot to be said for that.”
― Viggo Mortensen
“I’ve always been a fan of a Johnny Carson because he was so great with an audience and not afraid of self-deprecating humor.”
― Vince Vaughn
“Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.”
― Virginia Woolf
“Start every day off with a smile and get it over with.”
― W. C. Fields
“That’s how to make a stand-up comedian: You take a person who is uncomfortable and try to squirrel their way out of it through humor.”
― W. Kamau Bell
“I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.”
― W. Somerset Maugham
“Impropriety is the soul of wit.”
― W. Somerset Maugham
“You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.”
― W. Somerset Maugham
“I visited Jobs for the last time in his Palo Alto, Calif., home. He had moved to a downstairs bedroom because he was too weak to go up and down stairs. He was curled up in some pain, but his mind was still sharp and his humor vibrant.”
― Walter Isaacson
“My dad instilled in me a great sense of humor. I wasn’t bullied at school because my outward attitude was confident, and that helps.”
― Warwick Davis
“My parents armed me with an amazing sense of humor, and it’s what you need when, well, it’s what anyone needs in this world.”
― Warwick Davis
“Honest good humor is the oil and wine of a merry meeting, and there is no jovial companionship equal to that where the jokes are rather small and laughter abundant.”
― Washington Irving
“Keep your sense of humor, my friend; if you don’t have a sense of humor it just isn’t funny anymore.”
― Wavy Gravy
“There is humor in the specter of the worst disaster in our nation’s history. All I have to do is sweep away the debris of shock to find it.”
― Will Durst
“Everything is funny, as long as it’s happening to somebody else.”
― Will Rogers
“A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your steps as you walk the tightrope of life.”
― William Arthur Ward
“I think humor is a very serious thing. I use it as a way of weakening the reader’s defenses so that I can more easily take him to something more.”
― William Collins
“Prior to Wordsworth, humor was an essential part of poetry. I mean, they don’t call them Shakespeare comedies for nothing.”
― William Collins
“I believe that economists put decimal points in their forecasts to show they have a sense of humor.”
― William Gilmore Simms
“Using no control and using humor will build a relationship and make a dent to where the client puts the counselor in their quality world and then begins to relate and seek out the counselor. Effective therapy begins with the acceptance of the therapist into the client’s quality world.”
― William Glasser
“If this humor be the safety of our race, then it is due largely to the infusion into the American people of the Irish brain.”
― William Howard Taft
“I like dark humor. I think the world is very funny and tragic, and my photographs are basically dark Jewish humor.”
― William Klein
“The first ingredient in conversation is truth, the next good sense, the third good humor, and the fourth wit.”
― William Temple
“The first glass is for myself, the second for my friends, the third for good humor, and the forth for my enemies.”
― William Temple
“Funny songs aren’t usually that good. Like Weird Al and maybe a couple of Beatles songs, but it’s kind of hard to bring humor into rock music in an interesting way.”
― Win Butler
“There is something really horrific for any human being who feels he is being consumed by other people. I’m talking about a writer’s critics, who don’t address what you’ve written, but want to probe into your existence and magnify the trivia of your life without any sense of humor, without any sense of context.”
― Wole Soyinka
“I think being funny is not anyone’s first choice.”
― Woody Allen
“The thing that I’m known for – at least, depending on what Subreddit you go to – is being a comedian. And so, even when talking about heavy things, I still want to try to use humor to walk us in the door.”
― Wyatt Cenac
“’New Moon’ was such a serious, depressing movie that people felt we had lost a little humor of the books.”
― Wyck Godfrey
“If the blood humor is too strong and robust, calm it with balance and harmony.”
― Xun Kuang
“Without freedom and without humor, our cultures can’t have a healthy evolution.”
― Yasmine Hamdan
“People probably perceive me as a bit boring because I am a little slow in the humor department, but it’s just hard for me to get jokes when they’re told in English. I am always the last one to get it.”
― Yolanda Hadid
“By employing a certain sense of humor, you essentially get more serious about things and show conflict more effectively than if you were overly dramatic or only violent because that’s a one-way approach that just forces audiences to watch something appalling.”
― Yorgos Lanthimos
“I think God has a sense of humor, and the way my lessons come from God is very funny. I have to laugh at myself even if it’s a tough lesson.”
― Yvette Nicole Brown
“I wore goofy hats to school and did musical theater. Most people thought I was a dork. But if you have a sense of humor about it, no one can bring you down.”
― Zac Efron
“Over the years, I’ve learned that a sense of humor is the only skill that allows you to turn sucking at life into a career.”
― Zach Anner
“My childhood was great because my family has an amazing sense of humor, and it was just all making videos and jokes and doing skits and things.”
― Zach Anner
“My parents and my brother instilled in me my sense of humor. That’s kind of the way we communicate with each other, and it’s always been a way for me to get to know people.”
― Zach Anner
“Depending on where my self-confidence was, growing up, I would use humor either to bring people closer, or to keep them away from certain feelings I had.”
― Zach Anner
“Humor disarms people. It opens them up to starting a dialogue about things they wouldn’t normally talk about. I don’t understand how people who don’t have a sense of humor get through life.”
― Zach Anner
“It’s amazing how many companies aren’t really in tune to the needs of different travelers. There’s just so many embarrassing situations that you go through when you travel. You have to have a sense of humor about it and take it in stride. My whole approach is to embrace spontaneity.”
― Zach Anner
“’Big Bang Theory’ is not my kind of show. It’s not my humor. I don’t like multicam comedies. I don’t want an audience to tell me when to laugh.”
― Zachary Knighton
“For me, whenever I would see a lot of ‘black films,’ I didn’t feel represented in it. I didn’t feel connected to the characters or the situations or the humor.”
― Zoe Kravitz
“One thing my family has shown me is that having a sense of humor is everything.”
― Zoey Deutch
“I find humor to be the most attractive characteristic, but I certainly won’t cancel anything out, considering when you love someone you love someone, and sometimes you just can’t explain it.”
― Zoey Deutch
“Humor is a part of spirituality.”
― Zooey Deschanel
“Sites like Funny or Die and College Humor are great, but I’d say it’s appealing to 80% men and 20% women.”
― Zooey Deschanel
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