James Thurber Quotes

Comedy is brutal. It's powerful, though.

You can laugh at somebody because they are innocent, and because they are naive or they are about to walk into a wall, but if somebody's giving you stuff, if somebody's talking, giving you their take on things, what makes you laugh, generally speaking, is going to be somebody who is telling it in an angry way.

Humor can be an incredible lacerating and effective weapon. And that is the way I use it.

Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals.

Satire is what closes on Saturday night.

My success comes in making fun of whatever you're doing. That's my way.

No subject is unsuitable for comedy.

Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.

Jokes are grievances.

Everything can be satirized.

It's all been satirized for your protection.

I think puns are not just the lowest form of wit, but the lowest form of human behavior.

The satirist shoots to kill while the humorist brings his prey back alive and eventually releases him again for another chance.

The key to humor is often self-loathing or sarcasm. In a sense, that's how self-loathing is made palatable.

Comedy is a great weapon of attack. It's not a great weapon of support.

I have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humor.

I've spent my entire career being a satirist.

Crankiness is at the essence of all comedy. My wife and I were discussing the different types of cranky. There's entertaining cranky, annoying cranky, angry cranky.

I see parody as another form of comedy.

As far as I can tell, comedians are pretty serious people, and that's why they make fun of things all of the time.

You can make fun of everything.

Humor can be an incredible, lacerating and effective weapon.

A joke is a joke. There's an expression - I don't know if you have it - that's 'adding insult to injury.'

Everything I say is a joke. I am a joke myself.

Incongruity, they say, is one of the main ingredients of humor. Maybe it's because everybody can feel superior to me. I honestly don't know.