Top 1200 Writing Humor Quotes & Sayings

Old Zen was very funny; there was a great deal of humor and happiness. Zen today seems much drier. While there's a certain amount of humor, it seems to lack that total intensity because humor is one of the primary tools for liberation.

Humor writing is something that comes naturally to me.

The interesting thing about humor is that in humor, you - in logic, something is A or not A. In humor, it's both A and not A.

Your writing", she said to me, "it's so raw. It's like a sledgehammer, and yet it has humor and tenderness. . . .

The way the show was conceived originally and developed, has always had good writing at the heart of it, it's very difficult to be good with bad writing. 'New Tricks' has that with the right level of humor running through the series, along with the investigations.

Nine-tenths of the value of a sense of humor in writing is not in the things it makes one write but in the things it keeps one from writing. It is especially valuable in this respect in serious writing, and no one without a sense of humor should ever write seriously. For without knowing what is funny, one is constantly in danger of being funny without knowing it.

Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it ... what you wish in your secret heart were not funny, but it is, and you must laugh. Humor is your own unconscious therapy. Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air, and you.

If you're going to have a book full of clever people and nobody ever jokes, it's just not going to ring true to the reader. That said, humor writing is the hardest kind of writing there is.

You write the way you think about the world. My motto in times of trouble - and I'm speaking of life, not writing - is 'no humor too black.'

I would say just start writing. You've got to write every day. Copy someone that you like if you think that perhaps could become your sound, too. I did that with Hemingway, and I thought I was writing just like Hemingway. Then all of a sudden it occurred to me - he didn't have a sense of humor. I don't know anything he's written that's funny.

An interesting difference between African-American humor and Jewish humor, in it's kind of basic or maybe most austere type form is, African-American humor, some of it comes out of playing the dozens in which you insult the other person or insult the other person's mother, and so much of Jewish humor is like, you're insulting yourself. It's totally self-deprecating.

I didn't think that anything is beyond humor - not profane humor, but a good, honest approach to humor.

I love mixing humor and terror, or humor and exhaustion, or even humor and despair. I'm dealing right now with a loved one with cancer, and she's of course sad, but also telling the most disturbingly morbid jokes and puns. I love that, there's so much humanity in being able to mock fate and hardship.

Life has three rules: Paradox, Humor, and Change. - Paradox: Life is a mystery; don't waste your time trying to figure it out. - Humor: Keep a sense of humor, especially about yourself. It is a strength beyond all measure - Change: Know that nothing ever stays the same.

I like bawdy humor. I love bawdy humor, but not dirty humor.

Humor can help you to disagree without being disagreeable. The key in democracy is not necessarily that we agree, but that we participate....Despite all the heavy problems- domestic and international- there is humor. Humor transcends partisanship.

And, you know, I liked writing humor. Well, I should say, I wanted to write seriously, but it kept turning funny.

People who go for humor are wonderful because they do great humor. People who go for wit and end up with humor are people who have made a mistake.

I think Canadian humor is a little less broad than American humor.

As I write, I control my anxiety and anguish thanks to the invaluable aid of irony and humor. But every night I am subdued by an anxiety that knows no irony, and I must wait until the next day to rediscover the blend of anguish and humor that characterizes my writing and that generates my style.

Reality - Dreams = Animal Being Reality + Dreams = A Heart-Ache (usually called Idealism) Reality + Humor = Realism (also called Conservatism) Dreams - Humor = Fanaticism Dreams + Humor = Fantasy Reality + Dreams + Humor = Wisdom

I liked the humor of it, I've always enjoyed a sense of humor in God and in religion and in spirituality

I compare Stephen Sondheim with humor, because humor is unanalyzable. You can't analyze humor. You just have to get through it.

Working on newspapers, you're writing to a certain length, often very brief pieces; you tend to look for easy forms of humor - women can't drive, things like that. That's about the level of a lot of newspaper humor. It becomes a form of laziness.

Wit is artificial; humor is natural. Wit is accidental; humor is inevitable. Wit is born of conscious effort; humor, of the allotted ironies of fate. Wit can be expressed only in language; humor can be developed sufficiently in situation.

I use a lot of humor in my writing. But it's completely black humor.

Every American, to the last man, lays claim to a "sense" of humor and guards it as his most significant spiritual trait, yet rejects humor as a contaminating element wherever found. America is a nation of comics and comedians; nevertheless, humor has no stature and is accepted only after the death of the perpetrator.

Humor and laughter are not necessarily the same thing. Humor permits us to see into life from a fresh and gracious perspective. We learn to take ourselves more lightly in the presence of good humor. Humor gives us the strength to bear what cannot be changed, and the sight to see the human under the pompous.

Humor is something that thrives between man's aspirations and his limitations. There is more logic in humor than in anything else. Because, you see, humor is truth.

I liked the humor of it, I've always enjoyed a sense of humor in God and in religion and in spirituality.

I like the way that Dexter mixed humor, dark humor and tragedy, in a way I don't think that I've seen another show do. To handle those tonal shifts with so much confidence. Normally, you can mix humor and dark humor, you can mix dark humor and tragedy, but to mix all three... There are just moments with Robin and Reuben, the next door neighbors, that are just funny.

Writing humor is not something every single person can do.

Humor writing requires a rhythm and timing, as well as some kind of connection to the reader, and I think that's how I tap into it.

Just tell the truth, and they'll accuse you of writing black humor.

I regard the writing of humor as a supreme artistic challenge.

Humor is important in everything. Dress with a little humor and you can go a long way.

I can't fall apart every time I mention that my mother's gone. I actually laugh about stories or things or situations. Of course there's a wound that will never be patched up, but I approach it with humor. Of course, I don't overlook it and go straight for the humor, but I think we have to have humor to move forward.

Somebody who opposes Trump is wound so tight, they're not funny people anyway, that they don't get his humor. They really believe when he tells these jokes that that's dead serious stuff. There's not enough laughter on the left. Even their comedians are angry. Their comedians, the humor they shoot for is all personal put-down kind of humor where it used to not be that way. But Trump's humor, even the stuff that's not subtle, they miss, they take it literally and are frightened to death by it. It's incredible.

Writing humor in my column isn't as dangerous as performing it. If I fail in front of a live audience, the humiliation is as great as anything a human being can suffer.

Humor is really one of the hardest things to define, very hard. And it's very ambiguous. You have it or you don't. You can't attain it. There are terrible forms of professional humor, the humorists' humor. That can be awful. It depresses me because it is artificial. You can't always be humorous, but a professional humorist must. That is a sad phenomenon.

I can remember the times when I started including humor in novels that were suspenseful. I was told you can't do that because you can't keep the audience in suspense if they're laughing. My attitude was, if the character has a sense of humor, then that makes the character more real because that's how we deal with the vicissitudes of life, we deal with it through humor.

I don't have a caustic sense of humor. What I find funny, that humor comes from a much gentler place.

Humor is hard, hard, hard. And if you fail with humor, you don't fail halfway. You drop the ball humor-wise and everyone notices.

I am in the Master of Professional Writing program teaching Humor Writing, Literary and Dramatic.

Short fiction is like low relief. And if your story has no humor in it, then you're trying to look at something in the pitch dark. With the light of humor, it throws what you're writing into relief so that you can actually see it.

Many things have been written, including by me, linking humor and pain. Mostly, in my case, the humor part keeps me sane. If I spent all my hours writing things like "Fatal Distraction," I'd become a brooding, erratic melancholic. I'd be Raskolnikov.

You know what make me laugh? Good, clean, honest humor. Not-trying-to-be-funny humor. Like Will Ferrell. Will Ferrell got that kind of humor.

Outlining is not writing. Coming up with ideas is not writing. Researching is not writing. Creating characters is not writing. Only writing is writing.

It's curious that apart from the baroque ranting, 'Sarah & Duck' is very similar to 'The Thick Of It' - great characters, excellent writing and lots of humor!

Good-humor will sometimes conquer ill-humor, but ill-humor will conquer it oftener; and for this plain reason, good-humor must operate on generosity, ill-humor on meanness.

When I look at a lot of older stuff that I've written, I think one sign of amateur humor writing is when you see people trying too hard.

By Cunning & Craft is a masterpiece of writing about writing. If, like Scheherazade, you had to spin out a story under threat of death, this is the how-to book to read. It's filled with thoughtful, nuanced advice from a teacher/writer who actually writes, and writes beautifully and with great humor. The list of rejected stories is worth the price of the whole book.

I had mostly been writing humor books, and my instinct is generally to go for the joke.

It's hard for me to find humor in my current non-writing situation.

At the risk of appearing disingenuous, I don't really think of myself as 'writing humor.' I'm simply reporting on the world I observe, which is frequently hilarious.

I like telling stories with a sense of humor. But humor can also distance you from the subject you're writing about. I'm interested in using humor as a portal to something a bit more serious.

I think I love humor in poetry, but not that slapstick cheap easy humor, but that uncomfortable, "did she say that out loud?" kind of humor.

When I've traveled to London and Ireland, people don't seem to take themselves so seriously, and it's not just having a sense of humor about what's around you but having a sense of humor about yourself, and that's the healthiest sense of humor.

God has a tremendous sense of humor! Religion remains something dead without a sense of humor as a foundation to it. God would not have been able to create the world if he had no sense of humor. God is not serious at all. Seriousness is a state of disease; humor is health. Love, laughter, life, they are aspects of the same energy.

The irony or humor of my pieces is never really calculated, but they somehow always end up that way. Humor, especially when dealing with matters of extreme gravity, has a way of toppling set ideas and opening up new modes of interpretation. Furthermore, adding humor tends to shift the power balance.