A Quote by Guy Davenport
Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny.
Related Quotes
Sometimes I think I'm funny. But then sometimes I see myself, and I think, 'There's somebody trying to be funny.'
There is a world of science necessary in choosing books. I have known some people in great sorrow fly to a novel, or the last light book in fashion. One might as well take a rose-draught for the plague! Light reading does not do when the heart is really heavy. I am told that Goethe, when he lost his son, took to study a science that was new to him. Ah! Goethe was a physician who knew what he was about.
I think trying to be hot is the antithesis of trying to be funny. If you're aware of what you look like, or you're trying to... you can't be truly funny.
I think if you're trying to be funny, sometimes you're bending a piece of metal in a direction it doesn't want to go. And sometimes comedy just needs to find itself.
Some lucky people can be funny without half trying because they actually look funny, because acting funny is in their bones - fun as funny, not funny as crude slapstick.
I do think there are some actors that can get away with trying to be funny, and they're still funny because they're just likeable, and you want to see them. Me, though, when you see me trying to be funny, it's like the worst thing in the world. It's needy, it's cloying, it's manipulative - it's bad.
I guess in my house when I was growing up, I was comfortable trying to be funny. And my dad, of course, it bugged him sometimes. He was trying to rest, and I was constantly trying to say something stupid to get a reaction. But I like doing these movies. You can do it in front of the camera and then it's over. I don't have to worry about being in front of too many people.
British culture is very cynical sometimes of overt displays of sentimentality, and I think that becomes almost a suspicion of emotion, or a suspicion of someone making a grand statement. It is always easier to be ironic, or 'meta', or coolly postmodern. But I think there is such a thing as authentic sentimentality.
It's quite frightening; the business of trying to be funny is very hairy. In comedy, the potential for humiliation is huge. Trying to be funny and failing is about the most embarrassing thing you can do.
I just know from experience that reading a funny poem aloud, especially at the beginning of a public reading, can have a certain effect. Somehow narrowing the spectrum of possible emotional reactions. So while I like it when people laugh at my poems, and I definitely enjoy being funny in them, I don't really think that's the most important thing that's going on, at least not to me.
The truth is really funny. It's uncomfortable sometimes, it's dramatic sometimes, but it's really funny. Life is funny.
You can't be trying to be funny. As an adult actor, sometimes I'll muddle it up by over-thinking things.
I spent so much of my life reading about spirituality and reading about neuroscience and trying different meditation practices. It's a really big part of my life. But it's sometimes hard to talk about. There are so many people in the world who don't live in Southern California and don't spend their time meditating.
An indiscriminate distrust of human nature is the worst consequence of a miserable condition, whether brought about by innocence or guilt. And though want of suspicion more than want of sense, sometimes leads a man into harm; yet too much suspicion is as bad as too little sense.
I think people make mistakes when they're on Twitter when they're trying to crack jokes, none of it's funny, and it tends to happen to people who are trying to be funny.
I sometimes lie awake at night trying to think of something funny that Richard Nixon said.
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