A Quote by Vladimir Nabokov

Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.

Vladimir Nabokov

Quote Topics

Game Lesson Parody Satire

Quote Author

Vladimir Nabokov
American - Novelist
April 22, 1899 - July 2, 1977

There is a clear difference between sexist parody and parody of sexism. Sexist parody encourages the players to mock and trivialize gender issues while parody of sexism disrupts the status quo and undermines regressive gender conventions.

Anita Sarkeesian

I was very involved in political satire, and I'd been writing parody for 'Mad' and 'National Lampoon,' so I made up some strange story about Gerald Ford.

Chevy Chase

People are so sensitive about race that they can't hear someone speaking about their life in a very true way, or doing satire or political parody.

Margaret Cho

We live in an age that's very suspicious of preachy political rhetoric, which means that there's room for art that approaches these issues from the side - as satire, as parody, or as a kind of outlandish speculative proposition.

Jess Row

By the very nature of satire or parody, you have to love and respect your target and respect it enough to understand every aspect of it, so you can more effectively make fun of it.

T. J. Miller

It is, after all, far too easy to pinch and kick the bizarre Mormon Church; to say it's ripe for satire and parody is to say a Catholic schoolgirl is ripe for debauchery. It's like shooting polygamist fish in a barrel of coffee.

Mark Morford

I've found that there's a pretty wide range of silly. I don't want to do outright parody, because I like keeping my own characters and stories at the core of the books. And to be honest, I'm not smart enough to do the kind of wickedly sharp satire you get from someone like Pratchett.

Jim C. Hines

Drag is pastiche and parody and satire. Drag queens are never meant to be stars. We make fun of stars. Drag queens are the people that 'point' at the star.

Trixie Mattel

Satire is at once the most agreeable and most dangerous of mental qualities. It always pleases when it is refined, but we always fear those who use it too much; yet satire should be allowed when unmixed with spite, and when the person satirized can join in the satire.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

There is parody, when you make fun of people who are smarter than you; satire, when you make fun of people who are richer than you; and burlesque, when you make fun of both while taking your clothes off.

P. J. O'Rourke

I don't think 'Freak Dance' is a parody; it's more reference than anything. People don't think of 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' as a 'Frankenstein' parody. It's kind of like that.

Matt Besser

We have to do a film parody for Comic Relief. We can't decide which film to parody at the moment. Any ideas welcome, but not Spiderman owing to costume being too tight.

Dawn French

I think the big lesson I've learned is that it's very hard to write satire in America because almost immediately, whatever you've thought of turns out to come true, or sometimes it already was true.

Jennifer Egan

The best lesson I learned from my dad, Jack, is that nobody is tuning in to a game to hear you broadcast. They want to watch the game, so don't get in the way.