Samuel Johnson 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 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.

It's easier to do Shakespeare than Spelling, and I know that sounds crazy, because the challenge of Shakespeare is living up to Shakespeare, living up to that word, not failing, you know, where with Aaron Spelling it's like, just try to look good. Or maybe don't use Spelling there, that's bad. No - you can. He's dead.

I misdirect the audience, so they have no idea where they are or who they're listening to.

I'm a games and theory kind of guy. I love puzzles, so it was fun dissecting Shakespeare's prose.

One wanders to the left, another to the right. Both are equally in error, but, are seduced by different delusions.

Critics search for ages for the wrong word, which, to give them credit, they eventually find.

Shakespeare often writes so ill that you hesitate to believe he could ever write supremely well; or, if this way of putting it seem indecorous and abominable, he very often writes so well that you are loth to believe he could ever have written thus extremely ill.

When I get into an argument I generally could get something out of Shakespeare which I could put on an opponent to his disadvantage. He has helped me out of many a tight place.

A zealot is a person who, having forgotten his original purpose, redoubles his efforts.

Weasel Words

If that comes up, I'll just confuse them.

[The devil] al­ways sends er­rors into the world in pairs—pairs of op­posites. And he al­ways en­cour­ages us to spend a lot of time think­ing about which is the worse.... He re­lies on your ex­tra dis­like of the one er­ror to draw you grad­u­ally into the op­po­site one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through be­tween both er­rors. We have no other con­cern than that with ei­ther of them.

I kept writing not because I felt I was so good, but because I felt they were so bad, including Shakespeare, all those. The stilted formalism, like chewing cardboard.

Misdirection is one of my strengths.

We are like people looking for something they have in their hands all the time; we're looking in all directions except at the thing we want, which is probably why we haven't found it.

Words can be meaningless. If they are used in such a way that no sharp conclusions can be drawn.

There is no polite way to suggest to someone that they have devoted their life to a folly.

The way is near, but men seek it afar. It is in easy things, but men seek for it in difficult things.

I'm a real pawn-shopper.

I'm kind of like a combination of a red herring and a fake-out.

the whole way down, I was only thinking one thing . . . L E N A

To stick to the present situation would be something like a man who was observed in Times Square looking earnestly along the pavement. He was asked what he was looking for. He said "I lost my watch."

Went to the corner shop - bought 4 corners.

Pete and Repeat were sitting on a wall. Pete fell off. Who was left? Repeat.