Denise Mina Quotes

Humor writing is something that comes naturally to me.

I can't not write funny. It's literally the only way I know how to do it.

What most readers do not realize is that it takes a particular genius to write funny, to satirize.

People often ask me how I make things funny. I don't make things funny.

Everyone can write jokes and makes things clever.

My greatest regret as a writer is that I've never been able to include as many jokes as I'd like.

I'm a natural clown, I suppose, in writing, and one has to accept that; I can't do anything about it. I have written one or two novels which are not specifically funny. I wrote a study of Shakespeare which was not intended to be funny, but some people regard it as such.

A humorist has to be taken seriously before he's considered a real writer.

The best bloggers have tongue planted firmly in cheek.

Woody Allen's 'The Complete Prose' - It's just the best selection of comic writing by one author. You know it's good comedy when you get quite demoralised about yourself.

Chic Murray once told me he fell in the street, and a woman said to him, "Did you fall?" He said, "No, I'm tryin' to break a bar of chocolate in my back pocket."

One of the greatest punsters of all time, Peter Serafinowicz, is a good friend of mine, and I've been in situations more than once where people have been exhausted hanging around with him.

I find something funny when it lives on many levels - a level of self-deprecation, of knowledge and heightened reality.

I'm not funny ha-ha, but I look for real humour in just about everything I've ever played.

That's the thing, you see, we were never good enough to write proper punchlines.

I say funny stuff in my lyrics to make people laugh, but it's all in the seriousness of the music. I'm just being witty.

That's the great test: if you're going to be a great comic writer, not a humorist, you've got to take it into the throat of grief. Can you make laughter and seriousness so close that they are the same thing?

Comedy is easy. You have to react to what others are saying and it is all about the timing, the dialogue delivery.

As soon as you explain a joke, it immediately becomes unfunny.

I like telling stories with a sense of humor. But humor can also distance you from the subject you're writing about. I'm interested in using humor as a portal to something a bit more serious.

Micro humor is a joke that's contained in the writing: it's a punch line, it's a turn of phrase, it's something that you can see on the page, and no matter who's saying it, it is, in and of itself, a funny line.

Writing comedy is a superpower.

It's difficult to differentiate between a story that's humorous and clever and one that actually makes people laugh out loud.

Being funny is very complex.

I think I'm funnier in my writing than in person.