James Thurber Quotes About Comedy
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We are a nation that has always gone in for the loud laugh, the wow, the yak, the belly laugh, and the dozen other labels for the roll- em-in-the-aisles gagerissimo. This is the kind of laugh that delights actors, directors, and producers, but dismays writers of comedy because it is the laugh that often dies in the lobby. The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.
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The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself.
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With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.
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Man has gone long enough, or even too long, without being man enough to face the simple truth that the trouble with man is man.
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There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.
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Sophistication might be described as the ability to cope gracefully with a situation involving the presence of a formidable menace to one's poise and prestige (such as the butler, or the man under the bed - but never the husband).
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The laughter of man is more terrible than his tears, and takes more forms -hollow, heartless, mirthless, maniacal.
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Speed is scarcely the noblest virtue of graphic composition, but it has its curious rewards. There is a sense of getting somewhere fast, which satisfies a native American urge.
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The difference between our decadence and the Russians is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic.
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The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.
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The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel.
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It's a naive domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.
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The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people - that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature.
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Comedy has to be done en clair. You can't blunt the edge of wit or the point of satire with obscurity. Try to imagine a famous witty saying that is not immediately clear.
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The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody's guess.
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Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more.
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Every time is a time for comedy in a world of tension that would languish without it. But I cannot confine myself to lightness in a period of human life that demands light. We all know that, as the old adage has it, "It is later than you think." But I also say occasionally: "It is lighter than you think." In this light let's not look back in anger, or forward in fear, but around in awareness.
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There is something about a poet which leads us to believe that he died, in many cases, as long as 20 years before his birth.
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Comedy has ceased to be a challenge to the mental processes. It has become a therapy of relaxation, a kind of tranquilizing drug.
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All men kill the thing they hate, too, unless, of course, it kills them first.
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I am not a cat man, but a dog man, and all felines can tell this at a glance - a sharp, vindictive glance.
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We all have faults, and mine is being wicked.
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One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough.
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Don't get it right, just get it written.
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I'm 65 and I guess that puts me in with the geriatrics. But if there were fifteen months in every year, I'd only be 48. That's the trouble with us. We number everything. Take women, for example. I think they deserve to have more than twelve years between the ages of 28 and 40.
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I used to wake up at 4 A.M. and start sneezing, sometimes for five hours. I tried to find out what sort of allergy I had but finally came to the conclusion that it must be an allergy to consciousness.
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Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?
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Writers of comedy have outlook, whereas writers of tragedy have, according to them, insight.
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Discussion in America means dissent.
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