John Cooper Clarke Quotes

Smartness runs in my family. When I went to school I was so smart my teacher was in my class for five years.

In school, I was a genius of the year preceding the year I was in, every year.

I'd like to say I was smart enough to finish six grades in five years, but I think perhaps the teacher was just glad to get rid of me.

I was the one of those students who made the top half of the class possible.

I used to do this big rant at the end of some gigs with Ben Folds Five. The band broke into this big heavy metal thing and I started as a joke to scream in a heavy metal falsetto. I found myself saying things like: Feel my pain, I am white, feel my pain.

I've got the brain of a four year old. I'll bet he was glad to be rid of it.

But I don't distinguish between being laughed with, and laughed at. I'll take either.

My success comes in making fun of whatever you're doing. That's my way.

The English can be a very critical, unforgiving people, but criticism can be good. And this is a country that loves comedy.

Just kidding, I've been very athletic all my life.

You know what they call the fellow who finishes last in his medical school graduating class? They call him 'Doctor.'

Colombian humor is very black, very sarcastic.

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

Clap an extinguisher upon your irony if you are unhappily blessed with a vein of it.

Everything I say is a joke. I am a joke myself.

Eddie Murphy said once in an interview that nothing is offensive if it's funny. I sort of agree with that, but if something's funny and you're the subject of it, sometimes it's more offensive. If someone's insulting you, you want them to sound like an idiot.

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

I was not a jock in high school. I know, you're shocked.

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.

If you had a face like mine, you'd punch me right on the nose, and I'm just the fella to do it.

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.

Someone said to me at a party once, 'Oh, yeah, you're a comedian? Then how come you're not funny now?' And I just wanted to say, 'Well, I'm just going to take this conversation we're having and then repeat that to strangers, and then that's the joke. You're the joke later.'

I was a very, very serious child... I was valedictorian of my kindergarten and eighth-grade class.

I'm ridiculous, I'm ludicrous.