Wry Humor Quotes

A joke is an epigram on the death of a feeling.

Blessed is the satirist; and blessed the ironist; blessed the witty scoffer, and blessed the sentimentalist; for each, having seen one spoke of the wheel, thinks to have seen all, and is content.

The English take everything with an exquisite sense of humour. They are only offended if you tell them that they have no sense of humour.

Somebody says, 'Do a Tom Bodett, a folksy kind of thing,' and it sounds like something out of 'Hee Haw,' very insulting. They turn wry humor into disparaging sarcasm, and you get what amounts to insulting advertising.

My father was a master of the cutting insult.

I'm a silly guy, I love wit and cynicism and sarcasm.

Irony gives us, at little expense, the impression that we are experienced psychologists.

You ought to be ironical the minute you get out of bed. You ought to wake up with your mouth full of pity.

Humor springs from rage, hay fever, overdue rent and miscellaneous hell.

A satirist is someone who has a very skeptical view of human nature, but who still has the optimism to make some sort of a joke out of it. However brutal that joke might be.

My dad is and was very funny and had a really dry sense of humor, which, as a kid, seemed un-fun. But in retrospect, it's kind of hilarious.

A graceful taunt is worth a thousand insults.

I like dialogue that is slightly more brittle than life. I have always admired and wished to write one of those 1940s film scripts where every line is written with a sharpness and economy that is frankly artificial.

Some sarcasm is best told simply. Some humor is best told big and some is best told small.

I wouldn't overall say that "The Diagnosis" is a funny book. I would say that it has comic moments. It's a modern tragedy.

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.

People, particularly over-moralistic Americans, have often seen me as a pessimist and humourless to boot, yet I think I have an almost maniacal sense of humour. The problem is that it's rather deadpan.

You see, that is the sad, sorry, terrible thing about sarcasm. It's really funny.

A gentle sense of humor will be alert to detect anything that savors of a pious 'act' on the part of the penitent.

Humorists are not humorous twenty-four hours a day. In fact, when you get to know them well, they are often not humorous at all. They tend to be hypersensitive, taut, neurotic creatures driven by God know what obscure compulsion to earn their living the hard way.

Gonzo . . . acidic hilarity . . . 'The Fun Parts' has fine moments, but it's not the whole Lipsyte story. Read it with 'The Ask' if you really want to know how a mordant jokester with a madman's imagination became a literary rock star.

I just have a deadpan sense of humor, I guess.

Now I can broadcast to an audience of several million people on the 'Today' programme. I can talk about the day's news. But on radio, believe it or not, we have notes and scripts. And while we might ad lib the odd wryly amusing asides, they come at the frequency of a suburban bus. About one every 90 minutes.

Among other things I think humor is a shield, a weapon, a survival kit. So here we are several billion of us, crowded into our global concentration camp for the duration. How are we to survive? Solemnity is not the answer, any more than witless and irresponsible frivolity is. I think our best chance lies in humor, which in this case means a wry acceptance of our predicament. We don't have to like it but we can at least recognize its ridiculous aspects, one of which is ourselves.

I like books that are funny, but that aren't trying to be funny. I like situational humor.