Humorous Stories And Sketches Quotes

When a person has a poor ear for music he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it. He keeps near the tune, but it is not the tune. When a person has a poor ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping; you perceive what he is intending to say, but you also perceive that he doesn't say it. ~ Mark Twain

To the question: How do the authors of sketches, stories and novels get along in life, the following answer can or must be given: They are stragglers and they are down at heel. ~ Robert Walser

Pablo's many stories and reminiscences about Olga and Marie-Thérese and Dora Maar, as well as their continuing presence just offstage in our own life together, gradually made me realize that he had a kind of Bluebeard complex that made him want to cut off the heads of all women he had collected in his private museum. But he didn't cut the heads entirely off. He preferred to have life go on and to have all those women who had shared his life at one moment or another still letting out little peeps and cries of joy or pain and making a few gestures like disjointed dolls, just to prove there was some life left in them, that it hung by a thread, and that he held the other end of the thread. From time to time they would provide a humorous or dramatic or sometimes tragic side to things, and that was all grist to his mill. ~ Francoise Gilot

Then perhaps you don't need it. I think the scar gives you character, even if it does mar those pretty tattoos. Would make for great tavern stories if you didn't cover it."
Neferre laughed flatly and stuck her hands in her pockets. "There's nothing great about getting mugged, Ziro."
Ziro laughed, her deep voice jiggling her second chin. "Oh, aye. But no one said you had to tell the truth now, did they? ~ Ash Gray

'A Fair Maiden' existed in notes and sketches for perhaps a year. When I traveled, I would take along with me my folder of notes - 'ideas for stories.' Eventually, I began to write it and wrote it fairly swiftly - in perhaps two months of fairly intense writing and rewriting. Most of my time writing is really re-writing. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

I write for kids because I think the most interesting (and most humorous) stories come from people's childhoods. When I was writing 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid,' I had a blast talking on the phone to my younger brother, Patrick, remembering all of the things that happened to our family when we were growing up. ~ Jeff Kinney

The ark was like a portable computer hard drive and Noah was a one-man Geek Squad, and he dumped God's most important files onto it before he zorched the virus-ridden computer that was the world. ~ BikeSnobNYC

Stories of hiding out and near captures abound, including a humorous account of President Wilford Woodruff escaping capture because he was weeding a garden at the Squire home near downtown St. George wearing an oversized "Old Mother Hubbard" dress and bonnet sewn for him by young Sister Emma Squire. She wrote: "Soon after our marriage the president of the Church, Wilford Woodruff, came to live with us. It was the time of the raid, when the Government took the property away from the Mormon people...and they were hunting all the men that had plural wives and putting them in jail. ... We had some neighbors that knew we had someone staying with us, and they were very anxious to [discover] who it was. ... [So] I made [President Woodruff] a Mother Hubbard dress and sun bonnet and...dress[ed] him up ... and disguise[d] him so he could come [and go]. ... We called him Grandma Allen so the people wouldn't know. ~ Blaine M. Yorgason

Just forget for a minute that you have spectacles on your nose and autumn in your heart. Stop being tough at your desk and stammering with timidity in the presence of people. Imagine for one second that you raise hell in public and stammer on paper. You're a tiger, a lion, a cat. You spend a night with a Russian woman and leave her satisfied. You're twenty five. If rings had been fastened to the earth and sky, you'd have seized them and pulled the sky down to earth ~ Isaac Babel

As the colonel and I sat swapping stories in the plane, a jet aircraft buzzed past our window. I asked the colonel what type of aircraft it was, and he said, "Don't worry about it, Bob ... if you can see it, it's obsolete." ~ Bob Hope

Every character I've had in my act - none of them have a similar creation story. I actually thought up Peanut and designed him in my head. I described him to a woman that was making soft puppets and she drew up some sketches. And the character came to be just because he popped into my head. ~ Jeff Dunham

Eventually I would like to touch all the genres. I would like to do some detective stories, and I want to do a Western. I would want to do humorous Westerns. ~ Sergio Aragones

I love telling stories. I love the intimacy between the writer and reader. When you write sketches it's over in two minutes. When you write a book the characters have to have a bit of emotional depth. ~ David Walliams

The concept of marketing is almost as old as humanity itself ... suffice it to say here that it took almost no time for a wily serpent to sell Adam and Eve on a shiny apple from the Tree of Knowledge, at which point they became not only the first humans but also the first marketing demographic, and God expelled them from the Garden of Eden for being total consumerist dupes. (p. 40) ~ BikeSnobNYC

Only criminals and madmen walk into Central Park after midnight...or, occasionally, an actor. (Dark City Lights) ~ Jane Dentinger

One of them is a very familiar personage. Her name is "Mother Church." She is, in many ways, an admirable and dedicated person, deeply concerned about her children, endlessly and tirelessly careful for every detail of their welfare. Her long experience has taught her to understand her family very well. She knows their capabilities and she knows their weakness even better. She is patient and imperturbable, quite unshockable (she has witnessed all of the considerable range of human wickedness in her time) and there are no lengths to which she ill not go to educate her family. She has a huge fund of stories, maxims and advice, all of them time-tested, and usually interesting as well. She is very talented, skilled din creating a beautiful home for her children; she can show them how to enrich their lives with the glory of music and art. And there is no doubt that she loves God, and wishes to guide her children according to his will.

On the other hand, she is extremely inclined to feel that her will and God's are identical. In her eyes there can be no better, no other, way than hers. If she is unshockable, she is frequently cynical. She is shrewd, with a thoroughly earthy and often humorous shrewdness. She knows her children's limitations so well that she will not allow them to outgrow them. She will lie and cheat if she feels it is necessary to keep her charges safe; she uses her authority 'for their own good' but if it seems to be questioned she is ruthless in suppres ~ Rosemary Haughton

This story is not and never was meant to challenge anyone's faith; however, if one's faith can be shaken by stories in a humorous novel, one may have a bit more praying to do. ~ Christopher Moore

While I would agree that I write about serious subjects, and that they're not necessarily the most pleasant subjects or even the most pleasant people, as a writer I just think about the humorous aspects of these things - that's what keeps me going when I'm writing a story. ~ Ann Beattie

We do long-form-style improv. Our focus was characters and telling a long arc story over about an hour and a half. It was closer to a one-act play than one-off sketches. ~ Tatiana Maslany

I have been writing my whole life: stories and plays and sketches and scripts and poems and jokes. Most feel alive. And fluid. Breathing organisms made better by the people who come into contact with them. But this book has nearly killed me. Because, you see, a book? A book has a cover. They call it a jacket and that jacket keeps the inside warm so that the words stay permanent and everyone can read your genius thoughts over and over again for years to come. Once a book is published it can't be changed, which is a stressful proposition for this improviser who relies on her charm. I've been told that I am "better in the room" and "prettier in person." Both these things are not helpful when writing a book. I am looking forward to a lively book-on-tape session with the hope that Kathleen Turner agrees to play me when I talk about some of my darker periods. One can dream. ~ Amy Poehler

Throughout our lives, after all, we look for a story of our origins, to tell us why we were born and why we have lived. ~ Umberto Eco

If you're a certain type of actor, then eventually stepping into a director's shoes is a natural transition. I've always been the actor who's very focused on the narrative, where my character is in the story, and how I can benefit the story. I've always had a technical aspect of what the lens is, how the camera is going to move, how I can feed the information the director applies within that move. If you're that type of actor, narrative-based, technically proficient, the next step is actually not that far. ~ Russell Crowe

Everybody is convinced they have seen something others have not seen, and they delude themselves that they have thought things that other have it thought, but this is just because someone has taken the trouble to tell an ordinary story in an extraordinary way. ~ Marcello Fois

Little Joe was still behind him. Eli could feel it. He wanted to look back, but he couldn't. The tears were too close. If he were Fancy, he'd turn around and kick and buck and moo and do just about anything to keep his calf near. But Eli wasn't Fancy; he was a farmer. ~ Sandra Neil Wallace

Poetry is ultimately mythology, the telling of stories of the soul. The old myths, the old gods, the old heroes have never died. They are only sleeping at the bottom of our minds, waiting for our call. We have need of them, for in their sum they epitomize the wisdom and experience of the race. ~ Stanley Kunitz

Because stories are how we share our lives and what we truly mourn when they are lost. Stories are what connect us to our past and carry us to our future. They are what we cherish and what we remember. ~ Grace Lin

I like movies that interest me and stories that interest me, I don't think about how much money it's gonna [cost] to make the movie, I don't think about any of that. I think about certain aspects like who's making the movie and who's gonna tell a story that I wanna be involved in, but I don't have that choice and I never have. ~ Alex Pettyfer

I think people are really starting to rebel against that. And I think there's going to be more and more gray areas. Hopefully that means we'll see more stories with characters that could be interchangeable with men. ~ Evan Rachel Wood

We turn to stories and pictures and music because they show us who and what and why we are. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

The old story is a story of measurement. And the New Story is to bring measurement and meaning together. You cannot measure meaning. ~ Satish Kumar

Stories exist to entertain and inspire us. They're merely veils of hope for when we see the ugliness of the world. ~ Felix Alexander

Just tell yourself a story that'll satisfy you and pretend he told it. ~ Catherynne M Valente