Stephan Pastis Quotes

When you take a character seriously, there's more room for comedy because you're not aware of how absurd you are.

I don't see the point of Twitter, so I write a lot of stuff to mess with people. But because I used to do dumb things on the court, people think I'm dumb in regular life. But once people meet me, they feel dumb themselves.

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

I call it predicament humor. You don't do anything that cuts the star off at the knees or worse. You make him intelligent; you give him great ideas and great things to do.

Disappointment is an endless wellspring of comedy inspiration.

I think comedy stems from being honest, often painfully so. I hope I can achieve that perspective in my own life and also have fun.

I think it would be harder for me not to write comedy because the comic view of things is the one that comes most naturally to me.

Each cartoon needs the right amount of wrong.

I always try to attack the most honest issues I can in my comedy.

When you get down to it, at it's root, Comedy is truth, absurdity, and pain. One of my little mottos is: 'Do you remember the Peanuts cartoon where Charlie Brown kicked the football and kissed the Little Red Haired Girl? Neither do I.'

I love funny women. I love writing funny women characters.

Bad humor is an evasion of reality; good humor is an acceptance of it.

Our characters were antiseptic but we weren't. And if you remember what we did on BATMAN, as the scripts were written very funny, we played them very straight.

I can't not write funny. It's literally the only way I know how to do it.

If you record the world honestly, there's no way people can stop being funny. A lot of fiction writing doesn't get that idea, as if to acknowledge it would trivialize the story or trivialize human nature, when in fact human nature is reduced and falsified if the comic aspects are not included.

I would say most comedians have a very cynical worldview of the way the world can work. It's almost like if you didn't, you couldn't be a comedian.

You know that everyone thinks that in order to do South Park we must be wild, crazy, rock and roll stars. But the truth is we're just wholesome middle-American guys. We enjoy soda pop, baseball and beating up old people just as much as anybody.

I am a comic writer, which means I get to slay the dragons, and shoot the bull.

When I tell people I'm a comedian they say, 'Oh, are you funny?' I say, 'No, it's not that kind of comedy.'

The truth is, I've never thought of myself as the Michael Jordan of comedy. And that's a good thing. You know why? Because I'm not. Wasn't that Richard Pryor? Yes, it was. I know what I am: I'm funny!

It's hilarious to me that by writing an obscene fake children's book I am mistaken for a parenting expert.

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.

A lot of truth is said in jest.

My whole life I try to make into a comedy, so it would be nice to see that onscreen.

I like the irony in my work.