Literary Humor Quotes

Rabo Karabekian: I'm in the middle of a sentence. Circe Berman: Who isn't?.

Said Hamlet to Ophelia, I'll draw a sketch of thee. What kind of pencil shall I use? 2B or not 2B?

The hoary joke in the literary world, based on 'Dreams From My Father,' was that if things had worked out differently for Barack Obama, he could have made it as a writer.

There's always a host of voices you're inspired by. I love Don DeLillo, and I love Isaac Bashevis Singer, and I love Beckett, and I love Pinter. He's one of the funniest voices in English literature since Dickens.

I'd love Shakey Bill to tell me a story - I mean, William Shakespeare, he could squeak a nib couldn't he?

My biggest superhero of writing is Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine fabulist. He's an amazingly perceptive writer, but also willing to make a joke.

I picked up one of the books and flipped through it. Don't get me wrong, I like reading. But some books should come with warning labels: Caution: contains characters and plots guaranteed to induce sleepiness. Do not attempt to operate heavy machinery after ingesting more than one chapter. Has been known to cause blindness, seizures and a terminal loathing of literature. Should only be taken under the supervision of a highly trained English teacher. Preferably one who grades on the curve.

A new report claims that William Shakespeare was a marijuana user and may have been high when he wrote some of his plays. Which explains that one line: 'To be, or not to be . . . Wait, what was the question?'

Norman Mailer decocts matters of the first philosophical magnitude from an examination of his own ordure, and I am not talking about his books.

Most critics don't realize that a novel like One Hundred Years of Solitude is a bit of a joke, full of signals to close friends; and so, with some pre-ordained right to pontificate they take on the responsibility of decoding the book and risk making terrible fools of themselves.

I go in for what is known in the trade as 'light writing' and those who do that - humorists they are sometimes called - are looked down upon by the intelligentsia and sneered at.

Kingsley Amis was one of a trio of brilliant comic novelists who made English literature sparkle in the twentieth century.

I love [Nikolai] Gogol's great eye for idiot behavior. Gogol said that life is so tragic, so stupendously sad that we'd better laugh a lot and enjoy ourselves. You either get a sense of humor going or you go under.

I actually find novels that are determined to be funny at every turn quite oppressive.

As a friend once pointed out, the crotchety dowagers do tend to get all the best lines. That may be why I have so many of them in my books.

Every now and then, someone will tell me that one of my books has made them laugh out loud. I never believe them because: a.) my books don't make me laugh out loud; and b.) sometimes I have said this to a writer, when really what I meant was, 'Your book made me smile appreciatively.'

What writes worse than a Theodore Dreiser? ... Two Theodore Dreisers.

Of comic novels that have quaffed the elixir of 'classic': Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm.

The funniest novel you've never read. . . . Afternoon Men is a revelation to sophisticated readers of every stripe, but especially to a certain kind of artist manqu on the brink of discovering that life is a more difficult business than he ever had reason to expect. . . . The subject matter is 'relatable,' as my students like to say. Better still, though, is what you can learn about the craft of writing from this marvelous book. . . . Indeed, if you're looking for a funny, nonportentous Hemingway, then the early Powell is your man.

That, lad," he said proudly, "was some of the worst poetry I have heard for a long time. It was offensive to the ear and a torrrture to the soul....We'll make a gonnagle out of ye yet!

A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

Johnston's books are beautifully written and among the funniest I have ever read.

In Czechoslovakia, we consider Kafka a very funny man. A humorist.

I think the pattern of my essays is, A funny thing happened to me on my way through Finnegans Wake.

I just think that the world of workshops - I've written a poem that is a parody of workshop talk, I've written a poem that is a kind of parody of a garrulous poet at a poetry reading who spends an inordinate amount of time explaining the poem before reading it, I've written a number of satirical poems about other poets.