Wyatt Cenac Quotes

Rory Bremner I have no problem with; he is a satirist, and a very funny one, too.

'Saturday Night Live' has always been, you know, non-partisan - whoever's in power should probably be challenged.

'MADtv' was a network show, so we would come across the people that we were lampooning - a lot.

I'm a very funny person that doesn't get the chance to do a lot of comedy, and the same thing with my accents.

I had a 'Monty Python' CD, and I would listen to it in the car on the way to school. It also refined my British accent. I can do a killer British accent because I'm just imitating 'Monty Python.'

Mocking Hugh Hefner is easy to do, and in my mind should be made easier.

In the present state of the world it is difficult not to write lampoons.

The parody is the last refuge of the frustrated writer. Parodies are what you write when you are associate editor of the Harvard Lampoon. The greater the work of literature, the easier the parody. The step up from writing parodies is writing on the wall above the urinal.

When you're doing a comedy and you want to somehow satirise people who are taking themselves seriously, I think the most serious genre is the thing you're going to get the most out of. If you're trying to satirise a comedy, it's hard to do that - it doesn't really work as well. But I love the war movie genre and I'm a fan of all those movies that are part of what this movie is.

[The satirist] must fully possess, at least in the world of the imagination, the quality the lack of which he is deriding in others.

ZANY, n. A popular character in old Italian plays, who imitated with ludicrous incompetence the _buffone_, or clown, and was therefore the ape of an ape; for the clown himself imitated the serious characters of the play. The zany was progenitor to the specialist in humor, as we to-day have the unhappiness to know him. In the zany we see an example of creation; in the humorist, of transmission. Another excellent specimen of the modern zany is the curate, who apes the rector, who apes the bishop, who apes the archbishop, who apes the devil.

I regard everything with irony, including the face I see in the mirror when I wake up in the morning.

There is going to come a day when everyone here is going to need keen observation and wit to ridicule George W. Bush. But when that day comes, all we're going to have are tired puns and goofy looks. Because as you would say, we're suffering from the soft bigotry of low expectorations.

It is a challenge. When you do things that are comedy, you're having to look at the funnier side of life. Often I find Christians - but not just Christians, (any) people who have a certain core belief of things - don't like to have fun made of them at all.

Ridicule often checks what is absurd, and fully as often smothers that which is noble.

Lampoons, like squibs, may make a present blaze; but time and thunder pay respect to bays.

We're learning more about Osama bin Laden. His father was married 16 times, and he has five wives. I think we're getting to the root of his intense anger. And they say bin Laden never spends the night in the same place twice. No, wait a minute, that's Clinton.

Pornography is a satire on human pretensions.

We reserve the right to make fun of every single person on planet Earth.

I believe your own accent is inimitable, though I shall practice it in my bath.

It's a dangerous game that comedy plays. Sometimes it tells you the truth; sometimes it delays it.

Final installment of Things More Fun Than Reading the Sarah Palin Memoir: Driving into a tree, microwaving your head, and getting stabbed in the eye with a carrot.

Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous.

It is the business of a comic poet to paint the vices and follies of human kind.

The Death Star is just full of British actors opening doors and going,Oh... I... oh... What is it Lieutenant Sebastian? It's just the Rebels, sir... they're here. My God, man! Do they want tea? No, I think they're after something a bit more than that, sir. I don't know what it is, but they've brought a flag. Damn, that's dash cunning of them.