Max Eastman Quotes

The element of surprise - where you think you know where a joke is going, and then you're wrong. Those are my favorite kind of jokes.

I always told everybody the perfect joke would be where the setup and punch line were identical.

You can analyse a joke and say it's funny because this guy thought this was going to happen, and that happened, and it's surprising. But not all surprising things are funny.

I like when people are trapped in the joke, when there's no escape. I like to lead people down the wrong path and then trap them.

I'm gonna fix that last joke by taking out all the words and adding new ones.

The secret to humor is surprise.

What's great about comedy, obviously, is that you set up a situation that people assume one thing and then you break the assumption. That's basically the backbone to comedy. You set up a situation, let people make an assumption, and then you break the assumption.

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.

I don't think there's a punch-line scheduled, is there?

Louis CK knows that just because a joke is using space as a resource instead of something to be crammed like a hamper, this doesn't mean a story isn't happening.

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.

You learn what can become a good joke and can be repeatable. You have a shorthand about how to introduce a joke to someone.

Surprise is not humor. I think that there can be a fine line there.

Essentially a joke is creating an idea, whether sonic or visual, whether it's something musical or a traditional joke.

When you really boil it down, what comedy does is you expect one thing, and you get a totally different thing that's humorous, and we all laugh. That's generally how, just mechanically - super-distilled - comedy works.

When the narrator says, 'This is a story without surprises,' most of the time, this is not what happens.

As soon as you explain a joke, it immediately becomes unfunny.

For me, a great joke is an idea expressed in extremely concentrated form.

The most important thing in comedy - apart from empathy, which I think is important even if disguised - is surprise. I like surprising people with the fact that something's even a joke at all.

A woman was taking a shower. There is a knock on the door. Who is it? Blind man! The woman opens the door. Where do you want these blinds, lady?

I don't like the phrase shock value. Surprise is essential in comedy, and if people are shocked by what I consider merely surprising, then that's their shock. But there is no joke without surprise.

I asked you what you wanted and you said you didn't want anything. And I told you I wasn't planning on giving you anything; I was planning on giving you something.

I start with the joke line and write backward.

Twitter is a good medium to lean how to write jokes. It pushes you to write a better joke in that, on Twitter, the first joke about something has already happened. You need to think of the second joke and the third joke.

Comedy is easy. You have to react to what others are saying and it is all about the timing, the dialogue delivery.