Comedy Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Comedy. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.
Dr. Seuss (Happy Birthday to You!)
You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese, the Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the U.S. of arrogance, Germany doesn't want to go to war, and the three most powerful men in America are named "Bush", "Dick", and "Colin." Need I say more?
Chris Rock
Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.
Edgar Allan Poe
The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.
Horace Walpole
You are a manipulator. I like to think of myself more as an outcome engineer.
J.R. Ward (Lover Eternal (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #2))
Comedy is the blues for people who can’t sing.
Chris Rock
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
William Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.
Jean Racine
There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.
Erma Bombeck
There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.
Mark Twain
A drug is not bad. A drug is a chemical compound. The problem comes in when people who take drugs treat them like a license to behave like an asshole.
Frank Zappa (The Real Frank Zappa Book)
Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.
Charlie Chaplin
All hope abandon, ye who enter here.
Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy)
Plaudite, amici, comedia finita est. (Applaud, my friends, the comedy is over.) [Said on his deathbed]
Ludwig van Beethoven
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.
Mel Brooks
Life is a drama full of tragedy and comedy. You should learn to enjoy the comic episodes a little more.
Jeannette Walls (The Glass Castle)
Rejection is an opportunity for your selection.
Bernard Branson
The more a thing is perfect, the more it feels pleasure and pain.
Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy)
I can't go on, I'll go on.
Samuel Beckett (I Can't Go On, I'll Go On: A Samuel Beckett Reader)
Life doesn't make any sense, and we all pretend it does. Comedy's job is to point out that it doesn't make sense, and that it doesn't make much difference anyway.
Eric Idle
Thankfully, persistence is a great substitute for talent.
Steve Martin (Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life)
Don't bite his face, Eleanor told herself. It's disturbing and needy and never happens in situation comedies or movies that end with big kisses.
Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
Life is the tragedy,' she said bitterly. 'You know how they categorize Shakespeare's plays, right? If it ends with a wedding, it's a comedy. And if it ends with a funeral, it's a tragedy. So we're all living tragedies, because we all end the same way, and it isn't with a goddamn wedding.
Robyn Schneider (The Beginning of Everything)
I simply regard romantic comedies as a subgenre of sci-fi, in which the world created therein has different rules than my regular human world.
Mindy Kaling (Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns))
L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle.
Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy)
The devil is not as black as he is painted.
Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy)
The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (The Sirens of Titan)
Sometimes you can't see yourself clearly until you see yourself through the eyes of others.
Ellen DeGeneres
I was supposed to write a romantic comedy, but my characters broke up.
Ann Brashares (The Second Summer of the Sisterhood (Sisterhood, #2))
Life is a tragedy to those who feel and a comedy to those who think.
Molière
A tragedy is a tragedy, and at the bottom, all tragedies are stupid. Give me a choice and I'll take A Midsummer Night's Dream over Hamlet every time. Any fool with steady hands and a working set of lungs can build up a house of cards and then blow it down, but it takes a genius to make people laugh.
Stephen King
At some point during almost every romantic comedy, the female lead suddenly trips and falls, stumbling helplessly over something ridiculous like a leaf, and then some Matthew McConaughey type either whips around the corner just in the nick of time to save her or is clumsily pulled down along with her. That event predictably leads to the magical moment of their first kiss. Please. I fall ALL the time. You know who comes and gets me? The bouncer.
Chelsea Handler (My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands)
Women don't want to hear what you think. Women want to hear what they think - in a deeper voice.
Bill Cosby
The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant features are emphasized, is really a tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy.
Arthur Schopenhauer (The World as Will and Representation, Volume I)
Consider your origin. You were not formed to live like brutes but to follow virtue and knowledge.
Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy)
O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?
Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy: The Inferno, the Purgatorio and the Paradiso)
You are enough to drive a saint to madness or a king to his knees.
Grace Willows (To Kiss a King)
Into the eternal darkness, into fire and into ice.
Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy: The Inferno, the Purgatorio and the Paradiso)
Yeah, I love being famous. It's almost like being white, y'know?
Chris Rock
Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.
Aristotle (Aristotle's Poetics)
God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny.
Garrison Keillor (Happy to Be Here)
Love, that moves the sun and the other stars
Dante Alighieri (Paradiso (The Divine Comedy, #3))
Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. Our Guildensterns play Hamlet for us, and our Hamlets have to jest like Prince Hal. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.
Oscar Wilde (Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories)
The place is also big enough. We could all live there without killing each other." -Rhage "That depends more on your mouth than any floorplan." -Phury
J.R. Ward (Dark Lover (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #1))
As soon as you have made a thought, laugh at it.
Lao Tzu
I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.
Graham Chapman (Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Book): Mønti Pythøn Ik Den Hølie Gräilen (Bøk))
There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery
Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy)
The man who lies asleep will never waken fame, and his desire and all his life drift past him like a dream, and the traces of his memory fade from time like smoke in air, or ripples on a stream.
Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy)
Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke.
Steve Martin
It starts so young, and I'm angry about that. The garbage we're taught. About love, about what's "romantic." Look at so many of the so-called romantic figures in books and movies. Do we ever stop and think how many of them would cause serious and drastic unhappiness after The End? Why are sick and dangerous personality types so often shown a passionate and tragic and something to be longed for when those are the very ones you should run for your life from? Think about it. Heathcliff. Romeo. Don Juan. Jay Gatsby. Rochester. Mr. Darcy. From the rigid control freak in The Sound of Music to all the bad boys some woman goes running to the airport to catch in the last minute of every romantic comedy. She should let him leave. Your time is so valuable, and look at these guys--depressive and moody and violent and immature and self-centered. And what about the big daddy of them all, Prince Charming? What was his secret life? We dont know anything about him, other then he looks good and comes to the rescue.
Deb Caletti (The Secret Life of Prince Charming)
Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.
Jean de La Bruyère
THAT'S IT!" Terminus cried. "That's AGAINST THE RULES!" Polybotes frowned, obviously confused that he was being told off by a statue. "What are you?" he growled. "Shut up!" He pushed the statue over and turned back to Percy. "Now I'm MAD!" Terminus shrieked. "I'm strangling you. Feel that? Those are my hands around your neck, you big bully. Get over here! I'm going to head-butt you so hard--
Rick Riordan (The Son of Neptune (The Heroes of Olympus, #2))
Through me you pass into the city of woe: Through me you pass into eternal pain: Through me among the people lost for aye. Justice the founder of my fabric moved: To rear me was the task of power divine, Supremest wisdom, and primeval love. Before me things create were none, save things Eternal, and eternal I shall endure. All hope abandon, ye who enter here.
Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy: The Inferno, the Purgatorio and the Paradiso)
Each of us is full of shit in our own special way. We are all shitty little snowflakes dancing in the universe.
Lewis Black (Me of Little Faith)
Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy)
If I looked like him,” Tara said. “I’d want to have sex with myself. All the time.
Jill Shalvis (Simply Irresistible (Lucky Harbor, #1))
If you love something, let it go. If you don't love something, definitely let it go. Basically, just drop everything, who cares.
B.J. Novak (One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories)
The day that man allows true love to appear, those things which are well made will fall into cofusion and will overturn everything we believe to be right and true.
Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy)
My tendency to make up stories and lie compulsively for the sake of my own amusement takes up a good portion of my day and provides me with a peace of mind not easily attainable in this economic climate.
Chelsea Handler (Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang)
And I must draft an advertisement for the Daily Prophet, too,' he added thoughtfully. 'We'll be needing a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.... Dear me, we do seem to run through them, don't we?
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter, #2))
He shook his head. "The next time I hear a women going on about how neurotic men are, I'm going to remember this. You tell me you like my body, and what do I say? I say, thank you. Then I tell you I like yours and what do I hear? A long lists of grievances.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips (Kiss an Angel)
It really seems to me that in the midst of great tragedy, there is always the horrible possibility that something terribly funny will happen.
Philip K. Dick
I did not die, and yet I lost life’s breath
Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy)
ma gia volgena il mio disio e'l velle si come rota ch'igualmente e mossa, l'amor che move: i sole e l'altre stelle ...as a wheel turns smoothtly, free from jars, my will and my desire were turned by love, The love that moves the sun and the other stars.
Dante Alighieri (Paradiso (The Divine Comedy, #3))
You think I'd cheat on you?" I demanded with all the innocent outrage I could muster. "With another guy, no. With a cheeseburger . . . in a heartbeat.
Lisa Kleypas (Smooth Talking Stranger (Travises, #3))
Don't do it! Stay away from your potential. You'll mess it up, it's potential, leave it. Anyway, it's like your bank balance - you always have a lot less than you think.
Dylan Moran
Lost are we, and are only so far punished, That without hope we live on in desire.
Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy)
Fuck it... That's really the attitude that keeps a family together, it's not "we love each other", it's just "fuck it, man.
Louis C.K.
Etiquette tip: If you're looking for the right time to leave a party, when the host yells, "No one leaves here alive," that's your cue.
Rick Riordan (The Hammer of Thor (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, #2))
Some stories have to be written because no one would believe the absurdity of it all.
Shannon L. Alder
[T]he definition of 'crazy' in show business is a woman who keeps talking even after no one wants to fuck her anymore.
Tina Fey (Bossypants)
You know you're a hot mess when the only person buying you drinks all night is yourself.
Chelsea Handler
Otis," I said. "Shhh," he said. "I'm incognito. Call me...Otis." "I'm not sure that's how incognito works, but okay." Otis, aka Otis climbed into the chair I'd reserved for Sam.
Rick Riordan (The Hammer of Thor (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard #2))
While there is tea, there is hope.
Arthur Wing Pinero (Sweet Lavender - A Comedy in Three Acts.)
Hal yang terpenting dalam cinta adalah persahabatan. Dan hal yang terpenting dalam persahabatan adalah cinta ...
Winna Efendi (Ai)
You are mad!" she snapped, her chest heaving. "And you are a devil!" "And you, my dear," Royce imperturbably replied, "are a bitch." With that, he turned to the horrified friar and unhesitatingly announced, "The lady and I wish to be wed.
Judith McNaught (A Kingdom of Dreams (Westmoreland, #1))
Nothing gives you confidence like being a member of a small, weirdly specific, hard-to-find demographic.
Mindy Kaling (Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns))
She was a ray of sunshine, a warm summer rain, a bright fire on a cold winter’s day, and now she could be dead because she had tried to save the man she loved.
Grace Willows
For she doth make my veins and pulses tremble.
Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy)
She threw up her hands. "All right. Why not?" Why not?" Sure." His arms fell to his sides. "That's it? I pour my heart out. I love you so much I've got freakin' tears in my eyes. And all I get in return is 'Why not'?" What did you expect? Am I supposed to fall all over you just because you've finally come to your senses?" Would it be too much to ask?"...He'd begun to glare at her again, his eyes growing stormier by the minute."When do you think you might be ready? To fall all over me, that is.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips (Breathing Room)
We’re so self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. “Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.” And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. Save the planet, we don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. I’m tired of this shit. I’m tired of f-ing Earth Day. I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren’t enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. Not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me. The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles … hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages … And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere. WE are! We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam … The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ’cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?” Plastic… asshole.
George Carlin
When a window is opened up from the inside for you to climb through, then that window isn't there to be climbed through by you
Jimmy Tudeski (Double Trouble)
I like to watch the news, because I don't like people very much and when you watch the news ... if you ever had an idea that people were really terrible, you could watch the news and know that you're right.
Frank Zappa
A Christian telling an atheist they're going to hell is as scary as a child telling an adult they're not getting any presents from Santa.
Ricky Gervais
In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost. Ah, how hard a thing it is to tell what a wild, and rough, and stubborn wood this was, which in my thought renews the fear!
Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy)
أحلك الأماكن في الجحيم هي لأولئك الذين يحافظون على حيادهم في الأزمات الأخلاقية.
Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy)
Oh Christ, the exhaustion of not knowing anything. It's so tiring and hard on the nerves. It really takes it out of you, not knowing anything. You're given comedy and miss all the jokes. Every hour you get weaker. Sometimes, as I sit alone in my flat in London and stare at the window, I think how dismal it is, how heavy, to watch the rain and not know why it falls.
Martin Amis (Money: A Suicide Note)
Twenty years of joy and support and friendship, that’s a success. Twenty years of anything with another person is a success. If a band stays together twenty years, it’s a miracle. If a comedy duo stays together twenty years, they’re a triumph. Is this night a failure because it will end in an hour? Is the sun a failure because it’s going to end in a billion years? No, it’s the fucking sun. Why does a marriage not count? It isn’t in us, it isn’t in human beings, to be tied to one person forever.
Andrew Sean Greer (Less)
Kaz reached into his coat pocket. "Here," he said and handed Jesper a slender book with an elaborate cover. "Are we going to read to each other?" "Just flip it open to the back." Jesper opened the book and peered at the last page, puzzled. "So?" "Hold it up so we don't have to look at your ugly face." "My face has character. Besides - oh!" "An excellent read, isn't it?" "Who knew I had a taste for literature?
Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1))
Don’t do anything stupid." "Don’t worry," I whispered over the line, "I’m an expert on stupid." "You’re..." "Like, I can spot stupidity, because I know it so well. The way an exterminator knows bugs really well, and can spot where they’ve been? I’m like that. A stupidinator." "Never say that word again," Prof said.
Brandon Sanderson (Firefight (The Reckoners, #2))
You know, my young friend, I will be ninety years old next year, and life is still a constant surprise to me. We never know what will happen next, what we will see, and what important person will come into our life, or what important person we will lose. Life is change, constant change, and unless we are lucky enough to find comedy in it, change is nearly always a drama, if not a tragedy. But after everything, and even when the skies turn scarlet and threatening, I still believe that if we are lucky enough to be alive, we must give thanks for the miracle of every moment of every day, no matter how flawed.
Mark T. Sullivan (Beneath a Scarlet Sky)
The most effective attitude to adopt is one of supreme acceptance. The world is full of people with different characters and temperaments. We all have a dark side, a tendency to manipulate, and aggressive desires. The most dangerous types are those who repress their desires or deny the existence of them, often acting them out in the most underhanded ways. Some people have dark qualities that are especially pronounced. You cannot change such people at their core, but must merely avoid becoming their victim. You are an observer of the human comedy, and by being as tolerant as possible, you gain a much greater ability to understand people and to influence their behavior when necessary
Robert Greene (Mastery)
Ash nodded. “Look for Oberon or Mab,” he said grimly, scanning the battlefield. “They’ll likely be on opposite sides of the river. Try not to engage anything, Goodfellow. We don’t want a fight — we just want to get the scepter to the queen.” “Don’t kid yourself, Prince.” Puck grinned and drew his daggers, pointing to Ash with the tip. “You’re a traitor, Meghan’s the Summer princess, and I’m Robin Goodfellow. I’m sure the ranks of Unseelie will just let us waltz right through.
Julie Kagawa (The Iron Daughter (The Iron Fey, #2))
We've made a beautiful mess of things lately, haven't we?" He flashed that sexy crooked smile at me, which made my heart flutter. "But it's our crazy story," "It's been ours, only ours. There's been a lot of romance, sometimes way too much drama..." "very memorable comedy, a few pulse-racing action scenes..." "We've also had our fair share of suspense and raw terror, and unfortunately gut-wrenching heartache too." "I think we've covered it all, everything except fo being captured by aliens!" "But through it all you've loved me unconditionally, and I know how fortunate I am to have your love. I don't want to live without you, not for one more minute, not for one more second. I want to spend the rest of my days living my story with you...only you." "It is here that I fell in love with you" "And as fate would have it, it is here that I humbly kneel before you and ask you to be my wife.
Tina Reber (Love Unscripted (Love, #1))
Reading list (1972 edition)[edit] 1. Homer – Iliad, Odyssey 2. The Old Testament 3. Aeschylus – Tragedies 4. Sophocles – Tragedies 5. Herodotus – Histories 6. Euripides – Tragedies 7. Thucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War 8. Hippocrates – Medical Writings 9. Aristophanes – Comedies 10. Plato – Dialogues 11. Aristotle – Works 12. Epicurus – Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus 13. Euclid – Elements 14. Archimedes – Works 15. Apollonius of Perga – Conic Sections 16. Cicero – Works 17. Lucretius – On the Nature of Things 18. Virgil – Works 19. Horace – Works 20. Livy – History of Rome 21. Ovid – Works 22. Plutarch – Parallel Lives; Moralia 23. Tacitus – Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania 24. Nicomachus of Gerasa – Introduction to Arithmetic 25. Epictetus – Discourses; Encheiridion 26. Ptolemy – Almagest 27. Lucian – Works 28. Marcus Aurelius – Meditations 29. Galen – On the Natural Faculties 30. The New Testament 31. Plotinus – The Enneads 32. St. Augustine – On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine 33. The Song of Roland 34. The Nibelungenlied 35. The Saga of Burnt Njál 36. St. Thomas Aquinas – Summa Theologica 37. Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy 38. Geoffrey Chaucer – Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales 39. Leonardo da Vinci – Notebooks 40. Niccolò Machiavelli – The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy 41. Desiderius Erasmus – The Praise of Folly 42. Nicolaus Copernicus – On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres 43. Thomas More – Utopia 44. Martin Luther – Table Talk; Three Treatises 45. François Rabelais – Gargantua and Pantagruel 46. John Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion 47. Michel de Montaigne – Essays 48. William Gilbert – On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies 49. Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote 50. Edmund Spenser – Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene 51. Francis Bacon – Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis 52. William Shakespeare – Poetry and Plays 53. Galileo Galilei – Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences 54. Johannes Kepler – Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World 55. William Harvey – On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals 56. Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan 57. René Descartes – Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy 58. John Milton – Works 59. Molière – Comedies 60. Blaise Pascal – The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises 61. Christiaan Huygens – Treatise on Light 62. Benedict de Spinoza – Ethics 63. John Locke – Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education 64. Jean Baptiste Racine – Tragedies 65. Isaac Newton – Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics 66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology 67. Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe 68. Jonathan Swift – A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal 69. William Congreve – The Way of the World 70. George Berkeley – Principles of Human Knowledge 71. Alexander Pope – Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man 72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu – Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws 73. Voltaire – Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary 74. Henry Fielding – Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones 75. Samuel Johnson – The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets
Mortimer J. Adler (How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading)
A silent Library is a sad Library. A Library without patrons on whom to pile books and tales and knowing and magazines full of up-to-the-minute politickal fashions and atlases and plays in pentameter! A Library should be full of exclamations! Shouts of delight and horror as the wonders of the world are discovered or the lies of the heavens are uncovered or the wild adventures of devil-knows-who sent romping out of the pages. A Library should be full of now-just-a-minutes and that-can't-be-rights and scientifick folk running skelter to prove somebody wrong. It should positively vibrate with laughing at comedies and sobbing at tragedies, it should echo with gasps as decent ladies glimpse indecent things and indecent ladies stumble upon secret and scandalous decencies! A Library should not shush; it should roar!
Catherynne M. Valente (The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two (Fairyland, #3))
Though I have always made it my practice to be pleasant to everybody, I have not once actually experienced friendship. I have only the most painful recollections of my various acquaintances with the exception of such companions in pleasure as Horiki. I have frantically played the clown in order to disentangle myself from these painful relationships, only to wear myself out as a result. Even now it comes as a shock if by chance I notice in the street a face resembling someone I know however slightly, and I am at once seized by a shivering violent enough to make me dizzy. I know that I am liked by other people, but I seem to be deficient in the faculty to love others. (I should add that I have very strong doubts as to whether even human beings really possess this faculty.) It was hardly to be expected that someone like myself could ever develop any close friends—besides, I lacked even the ability to pay visits. The front door of another person’s house terrified me more than the gate of Inferno in the Divine Comedy, and I am not exaggerating when I say that I really felt I could detect within the door the presence of a horrible dragon-like monster writhing there with a dank, raw smell.
Osamu Dazai (No Longer Human)
How do you know, when you think blue — when you say blue — that you are talking about the same blue as anyone else? You cannot get a grip on blue. Blue is the sky, the sea, a god’s eye, a devil’s tail, a birth, a strangulation, a virgin’s cloak, a monkey’s ass. It’s a butterfly, a bird, a spicy joke, the saddest song, the brightest day. Blue is sly, slick, it slides into the room sideways, a slippery trickster. This is a story about the color blue, and like blue, there’s nothing true about it. Blue is beauty, not truth. ‘True blue’ is a ruse, a rhyme; it’s there, then it’s not. Blue is a deeply sneaky color.
Christopher Moore (Sacré Bleu: A Comedy d'Art)
Pamela, I’m in love with you. Yeah, it’s that bad. You’re so beautiful to me. Shut up! Lemme tell you. Let me. Every time I look at your face or even remember it, it wrecks me - and the way you are with me - and you’re just fun and you shit all over me and you make fun of me and you’re real. I don’t have enough time in any day to think about you enough. I feel like I’m going to live a thousand years cause that’s how long it’s gonna take me to have one thought about you which is that I’m crazy about you, Pamela. I don’t wanna be with anybody else. I don’t. I really don’t. I don’t think about women anymore. I think about you. I had a dream the other night that you and I were on a train. We were on this train and you were holding my hand. That’s the whole dream. You were holding my hand and I felt you holding my hand. I woke up and I couldn’t believe it wasn’t real. I’m sick in love with you, Pamela. It’s like a condition. It’s like polio. I feel like I’m gonna die if I can’t be with you. And I can’t be with you. So I’m gonna die - and I don’t care cause I was brought into existence to know you and that’s enough. The idea that you would want me back it’s like greedy.
Louis C.K.
You are the last Five left in the competition, yes? Do you think that hurts your chances of becoming the princess?" The word sprang from my lips without thought. "No!" "Oh, my! You do have a spirit there!" Gavril seemed pleased to have gotten such an enthusiastic response. "So you think you'll beat out all the others, then? Make it to the end?" I thought better of myself. "No, no. It's not like that. I don't think I'm better than any of the other girls; they're all amazing. It's just...I don't think Maxon would do that, just discount someone because of their caste." I heard a collective gasp. I ran over the sentence in my head. It took me a minute to catch my mistake: I'd called him Maxon. Saying that to another girl behind closed doors was one thing, but to say his name without the word "Prince" in front of it was incredibly informal in public. And I'd said it on live television. I looked to see if Maxon was angry. He had a calm smile on his face. So he wasn't mad...but I was embarrassed. I blushed fiercely. "Ah, so it seems you really have gotten to know our prince. Tell me, what do you think of Maxon?" I ahd thought of several answers while I was waiting for my turn. I was going to make fun of his laugh or talk about the pet name he wanted his wife to call him. It seemed like the only way to save the situation was to get back the comedy. But as I lifted my eyes to make one of my comments, I saw Maxon's face. He really wanted to know. And I couldn't poke fun at him, not when I had a chance to say what I'd really started to think now that he was my friend. I couldn't joke about the person who'd saved me from facing absolute heartbreak at home, who fed my family boxes of sweets, who ran to me worried that I was hurt if I asked for him. A month ago, I had looked at the TV and seen a stiff, distant, boring person-someone I couldn't imagine anyone loving. And while he wasn't anything close to the person I did love, he was worthy of having someone to love in his life. "Maxon Schreave is the epitome of all things good. He is going to be a phenomenal king. He lets girls who are supposed to be wearing dresses wear jeans and doesn't get mad when someone who doesn't know him clearly mislabels him." I gave Gavril a keen look, and he smiled. And behind him, Maxon looked intrigued. "Whoever he marries will be a lucky girl. And whatever happens to me, I will be honored to be his subject." I saw Maxon swallow, and I lowered my eyes. "America Singer, thank you so much." Gavril went to shake my hand. "Up next is Miss Tallulah Bell." I didn't hear what any of the girls said after me, though I stared at the two seats. That interview had become way more personal than I'd intended it to be. I couldn't bring myself to look at Maxon. Instead I sat there replaying my words again and again in my head.
Kiera Cass (The Selection (The Selection, #1))