Hilary Mantel Quotes

When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.

Comedy is brutal. It's powerful, though.

A joke's a very serious thing.

I think you can tell the human condition better through comedy.

Neil Hamburger writes such cutting jokes.

I'm looking at some comedic horror films because I have often been accused of being too dark. I'm not dark, not compared with 'Saw' or anything like that. So I'm looking at live-action horror films, but not slasher ones - ones that have humor and maybe some social satire.

Most jokes state a bitter truth.

With Portlandia, I don't think our intention is always to find something funny. Sometimes the humor comes from taking something really seriously. We're okay with making somebody feel uncomfortable or uneasy.

I don't watch television, but I saw 'The Office' by accident. I thought it was so sophisticated, the Victorian love story, and so bold. We'd do anything, all of us, to not work in that environment, and then I'm sitting there watching hours of it.

I think jokes can actually go to places that drama can't.

Humor is hostility.

To deliver something deadpan is very difficult; I don't think people know how hard those jokes are.

I think a joke is a form of truth-telling. A good joke that's absurd contains elements of our daily darkness and also a possibility to escape that darkness. So, for me, humor is an attempt to capture everyday tragedy and everyday hopeful moments that we experience all of the time.

All my humor is based on destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I'd be standing in the bread line - right in back of J. Edgar Hoover.

I think comedy and satire are the strongest ways to deal with very serious themes and very painful themes.

I just do jokes about real situations, pure observation.

Very few people took sordid things and made comedies out of them.

I don't think that 'No Man's Land' is a comedy. I think that it's a serious film with a good sense of humour.

As a comedian, I am attracted to truths that are uncomfortable. I like funny bummers.

Personally I don't spend much time thinking about being funny. For me it's always been just a way to get by, a way to be likable yet to remain removed. When I speak up, it's not because I have any particular answers; rather, I have a desire to puncture the pretentiousness of those who seem so certain they do.

Stand-up and comedy is the place where we are supposed to be able to make fun of all of the world's ills.

Satire is tragedy plus time.

Comedy exists to laugh at things that aren't laughable. But isn't it? That's what separates us from the animals. We laugh.

There was always another side to a joke, the side of the victim.

What would we do without irony? Check out your own daily reliance on it, the foul-weather friend who's there for you when nothing else is.