Josh Gondelman Quotes

I like 'The Big Lebowski'. The Dude is my man. My brother and I can quote that.

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.

'The Big Lebowski' was something we wrote for Jeff Bridges, and we set it aside for a couple of years because he wasn't available.

Jane Austen may not be the best writer, but she certainly writes about the best people. And by that I mean people just like me.

Everyone is a comedy. If people are laughing at you, they just don't quite understand the joke that is themselves.

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

I must be getting old ... People are beginning to tell me I look so young. They never tell you that when you are young.

I'm a misunderstood genius." "What's misunderstood?" "Nobody thinks I'm a genius.

Friendly satire may be compared to a fine lancet, which gently breathes a vein for health's sake.

Satire is an abuse of wit. It corrects few evils.

Parodies and caricatures are the most penetrating of criticisms.

Satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any.

So far, the only major accomplishment of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protesters is that they have finally put an end to their previous initiative, Occupy Our Mothers' Basements.

I've always said, "I love the women's movement, especially when walking behind it." And I have never understood why it is that people - you know, I hate liberalism. I'm totally opposed to liberalism. I do not like that at all.

One of the great things about humor is, you can slip things past people with humor, you can use it as a sweetener. So you can actually tell them things, give them messages, get terribly, terribly serious and terribly, terribly dark, and because there are jokes in there, they'll go along with you, and they'll travel a lot further along with you than they would otherwise.

I think I'll be a clown when I get grown,' said Dill. Jem and I stopped in our tracks. Yes sir, a clown,' he said. 'There ain't one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I'm gonna join the circus and laugh my head off.' You got it backwards, Dill,' said Jem. 'Clowns are sad, it's folks that laugh at them.' Well I'm gonna be a new kind of clown. I'm gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks.

A friend of mine was asked to a costume ball a short time ago. He slapped some egg on his face and went as a liberal economist.

It's weird the way "finger puppet" sounds okay as a noun... ladies.

I don't think half my stuff would be funny if the audience didn't feel at least a little bit safe that it's not how I truly feel.

I regard everything with irony, including the face I see in the mirror when I wake up in the morning.

I tell the truth and I don't try to sugarcoat things. But I also decided that if you don't use humor or satire, then it's just too dark all the time. And one of my favorite literary works is A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift. As you know, that was an enormously famous satire piece that was able to point out, you know, things to people in a different way. And I do believe that satire and humor can reveal truth in a way that sometimes doesn't get revealed through other means. And so I decided to, every now and then, use satire and humor as well.

As a comedian, I think we all look for those areas where the truth diverts from what people are saying. That's why politics is such a rich area for us, because politicians make promises, and they don't keep them, and when we point out the difference, we get the laugh.

Pornography is a satire on human pretensions.

I have never seen it (Jaws 4) but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built and it is terrific.

It doesn't bother me when someone calls me a 'dumb blonde.' I'm neither dumb or blonde.