Roisin Murphy Quotes

What is satire if not a marriage of civil disobedience to a laugh track, a potent brew of derision and lack of respect that acts as a nettle sting on the thin skin of the humourless?

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

Comedy is inherently subversive because it turns the normal reality on its head. The art form is all about these questions and contradictions. In comedy, we're dealing with language that we all understand, but words can have a dozen other things around them that alter or affect meaning.

Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.

It's all been satirized for your protection.

Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful.

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

Satire is, by definition, offensive. It is meant to make us feel uncomfortable. It is meant to make us scratch our heads, think, do a double-take, and then think again.

Being a comedy writer gives you permission to be an outsider and poke fun at what people think about other people.

I've spent my entire career being a satirist.

Satire is a form of social control, it's what you do. It's not personal. It's a job.

I would think a sense of the absurd is more important for a political cartoonist, because that could define things like a sense of hypocrisy or a sense of the things one has to be skeptical about.

I don't ever try to make a serious social comment.

But in terms of satire and comedy, our biggest and earliest influence was Mad magazine.

Comedy always pushes some buttons, because it wouldn't be comedy if it didn't.

It is difficult not to write satire.

It just happened that the public happened to, uh, appreciate the satirical quality of these crazy things.

Satire also allows you to make fun of every different aspect. It allows you to make fun of both sides. It allows you to make fun of everything, really, so you can do it in a harmless way.

I like to write a lot of satire.

Humor is hostility.

There is no place for a person like me in a world that only takes itself seriously. Satire is so necessary but fairly ineffective.

Satire can always be found everywhere. A people without love for satire is a dead people.

Comedians are obsessed with justice and the truth.

It's an old Elizabethan idea. The fool is the only one who is allowed to make fun of the king because he is a fool. I can say whatever I want about anybody else because I'm just an idiot talking - I'm not insisting that I'm any smarter than anyone else. It's satire.

No humorist is under any obligation to provide answers and probably if you were to delve into the literary history of humour it's probably all about not providing answers because the humorist essentially says: this is the way things are.