John Gay Quotes

It's absurd to think of 'Pride and Prejudice,' this classic, beloved book, beset with a zombie uprising. The goal is to make you suspend your disbelief enough to allow you to get lost in the story and believe what you're reading for a while.

'American Dad' is, by its nature, much more political.

'The Divine Comedy' is very sophisticated but also very popular.

The modern form of things had begun to appeal to me, also (as material for satire) politics, and the lives of the great and little, high up in the social scale.

I read 'Animal Farm' when I was 11, and it remained my favorite book, really.

A lot of political music to me can be rather pedantic and corny, and when it's done right - like Bruce Springsteen or Jackson Browne or great satire from Randy Newman, there's nothing better.

Political satire is a serious thing. In democratic newspapers throughout the world there are daily cartoons that often are not even funny, as is the case especially in many English-language newspapers. Instead, they contain a political message, and the artist takes full responsibility.

I've always been interested in socially political, or overtly political, comedy.

Is there a sharper commentary on American culture and the world than The Simpsons?

Once, in London, the BBC asked me what was my favorite English book. I said Alice in Wonderland.

'Harry Potter' achieved a very special act of actual magic: it made it completely acceptable for an adult to carry around, read and enjoy a children's book.

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.

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

Though not really a comedy, 'Rosewater' is a demonstration of the creed behind 'The Daily Show': belief in the crucial need for impious wit against entrenched power. The freedom of the press is also the freedom to depress - and to inspire. That's a message that can outlive any Oscar season.

What I've appreciated about the 'Bond' films is there's always been a subtle social relevance to them. They've always commented on the times.

In a weird way, our satirists probably have the most complicated, nuanced views of our politics now - Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver. I don't know what that says about our country.

I love, for example, 'Full Frontal with Sam Bee.' I just love her show.

I think I've seen every 'Bill Maher' episode.

Satire that the censor understands is rightly censored.

Many of the American cartoonists that want to have a job and go so much for the total right without thinking, sometimes they get a slap on the face when their politician lets them down. So it goes on and on. The thing is staying in the middle and not getting committed, trying to get the best of both and do that with a sense of humor.

Any satirist writing a futuristic novel who had imagined a President Reagan during the Eisenhower years would have been accused of perpetrating a piece of crude, contemptible, adolescent, anti-American wickedness, when, in fact, he would have succeeded, as prophetic sentry, where Orwell failed.

I don't watch much television. Yeah, that's pretty funny. I don't know where The Daily Show stand politically, do you?

I don't want to speak for my movies; you could say my movies are just completely silly and dumb, but in the case of 'Idiocracy' and 'Borat,' without a doubt there is a really subversive and sophisticated assault on American culture. It's one thing to mess stuff up and break stuff, but [Borat] is really pointing out the ideology of America. It's one thing to break stuff and damage people's possessions, but when you start aiming at the ideology of America, that's dangerous comedy.

I think The New Yorker's cartoons aren't very political because the people who do the cartoons aren't awfully political people, and they aren't paid to be political. I think editorial cartoonists are. That's what they do. They probably have a great natural interest in politics, and then they are paid to do it, so they sort of have to hunt out these ideas. I admire editorial cartoons, but I'm also sort of happy that I don't do them because I'd hate to have to label things and I'd especially hate, more than anything, to label something Dennis Hastert or Mark Foley.