William Stafford Quotes

My poems... the ones that start out as jokes become these big ponderous things and the ones that start out ponderous devolve into jokes.

Most jokes state a bitter truth.

A joke is a joke or the image of a truth.

Jokes? There are no jokes. The truth is the funniest joke of all.

A joke's a very serious thing.

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.

Many of my poems try to use a comic element to reach a place that isn't comic at all. The comic element works as a surprise. It is unexpected and energizing.

Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.

You shouldn't get too close to the truth, because then maybe you stop being funny.

All genuinely intellectual work is humorous.

There are elements of irony in my work, of course.

The love of truth lies at the root of much humor.

I've always been very upfront about the way I write, and I've always used the tools humorists use, such as exaggeration.

Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.

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.

You achieve the surreal jokes through the realism by making it elastic.

In order to be able to write a good joke, you have to find the truth.

A good comic explores the imagination, but it's always got to have those notes of truth running through it.

The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh.

An epigram is but a feeble thing - With straw in tail, stuck there by way of sting.

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.

I think I write serious comedies. I would love to be able to write for pure pleasure, but the undertow is always loneliness.

The truth is really funny. It's uncomfortable sometimes, it's dramatic sometimes, but it's really funny. Life is funny.

Of puns it has been said that those who most dislike them are those who are least able to utter them.

I'll see something, and I'll go, 'Oh, wow, that's interesting,' because really, comedy comes from the truth.