Florence King Quotes

Facetiousness is allowable when it is the most proper instrument of exposing things apparently base and vile to due contempt.

Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.

Satire is focused bitterness.

Satire is fascinating stuff. It's deadly serious, and when politics begin to break down, there is a drift towards satire, because it's the only thing that makes any sense.

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

From my experience, politicians are much more uncomfortable being made fun of than they are being preached at and screeched at - you know, and the soapbox routine. They're much more uneasy knowing they're a target of ridicule.

I've spent my entire career being a satirist.

If nothing is serious anymore, then there's nothing to satirize.

I think to simply make fun of something isn't particularly interesting. I try to not just do a parody of something or belittle something or disparage something.

I don't really like using ridicule as a form of humor.

When he said we were trying to make a fool of him, I could only murmur that the Creator had beat us to it.

I'm accused of, and perhaps rightly so, of not being mean enough. I've been taken to task in many a book review; a good satirist has to, you know, has to kill.

Half-brights consider it comedy gold to congratulate anyone they dislike for 'winning the Kentucky Derby!' The only thing more bracingly original to not-smart people is: 'Stay classy!'

Satire is a weapon, and it can be quite cruel.

It's rare in satirical comedy not just to be cynical.

Editorial pages all say, 'Well, the other guy has a point, too. It remains to be seen how this will come out. We certainly hope it comes out fine; blah, blah.' Cartoonists don't go that way. Our job is to stick out our tongues, to show a big raspberry to whatever pompous jerk happens to be mouthing off.

Satire's my weapon, but I'm too discreet To run amuck, and tilt at all I meet.

Wit implies hatred or contempt of folly and crime, produces its effects by brisk shocks of surprise, uses the whip of scorpions and the branding-iron, stabs, stings, pinches, tortures, goads, teases, corrodes, undermines.

One parody is worth a thousand polemics.

Very deep. You should send that in to the Reader's Digest. They've got a page for people like you.

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.

Satirists gain the applause of others through fear, not through love.

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

Who can refute a sneer?