Douglas Adams Quotes

Mike Judge is my Jonathan Swift, and I say that because I don't know any other satirists. But the problem with satire is that it's so easily misinterpreted.

The thing that's weird is that we thought it was funny. We expected people to get the joke - that we [with Andrew Ridgeley] were two guys really making asses of ourselves.

There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.

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

I think at its best the American sense of humor is the same as the British sense of humor at its best, which is to be wry and ironic and self deprecating.

I'm like a sight gag.

Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute.

My dad's sense of humor was direct and sometimes surreal - his quick wit is well known amongst our family and friends. He raised me on Spike Jones records and W.C. Fields movies, and his sense of humor fell somewhere in between.

The pun exists in a social and political void, caring nothing for the issues of its day, content merely to display itself in its small cleverness.

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 works best when it hews close to the line between the outlandish and the possible - and as that line continues to grow thinner, the satirist's task becomes ever more difficult.

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.

We never really tried to shock for shock's sake on 'Family Guy'. If something was horribly offensive and shocking, we would put it in if it was also hysterically funny.

In terms of pure comedic value, 'Tootsie' is brilliant.

I have always found humor in places where humor wasn't necessarily intended.

It's both funny and sad which seem to me to be the two basic ingredients of good comedy.

We all know how funny Morrissey is. Actually, you know what? I say that sarcastically. His songs are some of the funniest songs I've ever heard in my life. I mean, really. I mean, not that the 'Girlfriend in a Coma' is, like, really funny.

You achieve the surreal jokes through the realism by making it elastic.

Cartooning is about deconstruction: you gotta tear something down to make a joke.

More eccentric characters can push pretty far, but if you stay on the side of reality, it's always funnier.

'Bunk' is better than 'Wheel of Fortune' because we have a wheel, just like them, but our wheel is purposeless. It doesn't do anything. It just spins for no reason. Which is nice because it frees our wheel up to really pursue its dream: becoming a professional paddlewheel.

'Discworld' is taking something that you know is ridiculous and treating it as if it is serious, to see if something interesting happens when you do so.

I think great humor lies in playing the truth of a situation.

Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it.