Puns Quotes

Goodreads.com is actually about fiction not dreading goo. But I have a profile there, anyway... ~ Michael A. Arnzen

Far be it from me to insult the pun! I honor it in proportion to its merits; nothing more. All the most august, the most sublime, the most charming of humanity, and perhaps outside of humanity, have made puns. ~ Victor Hugo

If you invited a hedge wizard to a party, he would spend half the evening talking to your potted plant. And he would spend the other half listening. ~ Terry Pratchett

The glass is completely full...of shit. ~ Brian Spellman

Impersonating a quiet, gentle librarian like Barbara Gordon
You deserve to be taken out of circulation! ~ Karl Kesel

What did the mat say to the door? You must be really aDOORable to open up to everyone who knock at you. And I welcome everyone and what do I get? People stepping all over me ~ Ana Claudia Antunes

I love puns. I've been known to turn the car around just to take advantage of a good pun situation. It really is the highest form of humor. ~ Karin Slaughter

I grew up in an environment of jokes and sarcasm and puns. I talk that way, so I write that way. ~ Allan Sloan

I like the old wisdom
puns, riddles, spells, proverbs. ~ Mason Cooley

'The Sopranos' is filled with really retrograde humor. Bathroom humor, falls, stupid puns, bad jokes - infantile, adolescent stuff, but it makes me laugh. ~ David Chase

For three years, all through junior high, my social death was grossly overdetermined. I had a large vocabulary, a giddily squeaking voice, horn-rimmed glasses, poor arm strength, too-obvious approval from my teachers, irresistible urges to shout unfunny puns, a near-eidetic acquaintance with J.R.R. Tolkien, a big chemistry lab in my basement, a penchant for intimately insulting any unfamiliar girl unwise enough to speak to me, and so on. ~ Jonathan Franzen

Jake Wexler, standing or sitting when not lying down ~ Ellen Raskin

My puns are not trivial. They are quadrivial ~ James Joyce

Coincidences are spiritual puns. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Metaphors, similes, puns - all manner of metonymy - I'm interested in language that cannot be parsed by a machine - language that can only be understood through acculturation. ~ Joshua Cohen

Denied a Lenin and deprived of Napoleon, France retreated into the last and, we must hope, indestructible redoubt, the world of Astérix. The postwar vogue for Parisian thinkers barely concealed their collective retreat into Hexagonal introversion and into the ultimate fortress of French intellectuality, Cartesian theory and puns. ~ Eric J. Hobsbawm

And he won her freedom by playing beautiful music,' Roland added. 'I think he played a lute. Or maybe it was a lyre.'
'Ach, weel, that'll suit us fine,' said Daft Wullie. 'We're experts at lootin' an' then lyin' aboot it. ~ Terry Pratchett

This Byrd wants a Wren. ~ Leslea Tash

Swallowed my pride and shit lions. ~ Brian Spellman

There is never a bad time for a pun. There's also never really a good time for a pun. You might as well just stay braced for a pun at all times, and ride them when they come with as much grace as you can manage.The fact that you can replace 'pun' with 'disaster' in the last three rules says a lot about the human race. ~ Terry Pratchett

Had a cold hummus with pita bread,
Under a delicious food, yellow or red.
Might just have the appetite to cook
Urgent dinner by hook or crook.
So that's just a humus humor spread. ~ Ana Claudia Antunes

You okay to mount?" he asked Ty.
"Next time you ask me that, you better be naked. ~ Abigail Roux

I'm probably doing puns more than anything in my life. ~ Scott Aukerman

If I had to pick another career, I'd be an optometrist for potatoes. That's where the money is. ~ Peter Wisan

It's drier than I thought it would be."

"That isn't saying much," the shape-shifter griped, wrapping the waterlogged coat more securely around her frame. "We've absorbed enough water to be classified as vernal pools. ~ Nenia Campbell

Infinite regression is limitless, without it we are nothing. ~ Solange Nicole

People may claim to hate puns, but most true word lovers have groaned to like them. ~ Jay Heinrichs

Cucumbers are technically a fruit and in the same family as pumpkins, melons and squash, so it may benefit those markets, although, to be honest, giant melons don't strike me as potentially that commercial. ~ Jasper Fforde

People, if you can't get through the puns, I can't give you the good stuff. ~ Jon Stewart

These napkins are more holy than righteous, Mrs. Wapshot said, and most of her conversation at table was made up of just such chestnuts, saws and hoary puns. ~ John Cheever

Presently Jack Pumpkinhead became uneasy.

"I wonder if riding through the air is liable to spoil pumpkins," he said.

"Not unless you carelessly drop your head over the side," answered the Woggle-Bug. "In that event your head would no longer be a pumpkin, for it would become a squash."

"Have I not asked you to restrain these unfeeling jokes?" demanded Tip, looking at the Woggle-Bug with a severe expression.

"You have; and I've restrained a good many of them," replied the insect. "But there are opportunities for so many excellent puns in our language that, to an educated person like myself, the temptation to express them is almost irresistible. ~ L. Frank Baum

I never knew an enemy to puns who was not an ill-natured man. ~ Charles Lamb

Pandemonium did not reign; it poured. ~ John Kendrick Bangs

Your magic gets me hard," he said, looking like he wished he could be anywhere but where he was. "When you do anything, I get hard, really. Even your ridiculous sex puns. You remember when you wrapped those Dark wizards in stone at the restaurant?"
"Yeah," I managed to say.
"I wanted to tell you that you gave me an e-rock-tion." He bent over and banged his forehead against the table. "Why, why, why did I say that out loud? Please. Someone. Anyone. Kill me."
"Sex puns," I breathed. "Knight Delicious Face said a sex pun. ~ T.J. Klune

I hate puns. And, I'm tired of pardoning them. ~ Mark Lowry

Kelly glanced at the freezer as they headed for the steps. "Hey, maybe one of them will donate a liver to your dad."
Nick looked over his shoulder at Kelly, his eyes wide.
"I'm just saying. Three perfectly good livers sitting in there," Kelly said, completely deadpan. "Nobody's using them. I'll go get one for you."
Nick gaped at him. "How the hell did you ever pass your psych evals?"
"I cheated off your papers."
Nick rolled his eyes and started up the stairs.
"The Navy gives bubble tests. When in doubt, go with C."
"Kelly."
"Get it? Navy? The sea?"
"Kels, shut up."
"Oh, come on! You love puns."
Nick laughed, unable to stop himself. ~ Abigail Roux

Jasper!" Casey shouts, startling the young woman. "My cargo is talking to me! ~ Nathan Reese Maher

You're tense. You can't do yoga if you're tense."

I broke form and frowned at my yoga partner. "Would you quit henpecking me?"

Sienna lifted an eyebrow. "Only if you stop crowing."

My mouth twitched, but I caught my smile before it could spread. "Next you're going to call me cocky."

"I wasn't. I was going to call you a chick magnet."

I gave in to a laugh and shook my head at Jethro's fiancée. She was good at puns, and I liked this about her. She always put me in a better mood.

Sienna flashed a smile and her trademark dimples made an appearance. "Did you enjoy that one?"

"It's better than being called a motherclucker. ~ Penny Reid

Babel is a Biblical term for Babylon. The word is Semitic; Bab means gate and El means Cod, so Babel means 'Gate of God.' But it is probably also somewhat onomatopoeic, imitating someone
who speaks in an incomprehensible tongue. The Bible is full of puns. ~ Neal Stephenson

Puns are the highest form of literature. ~ Alfred Hitchcock

My being a writer and playing Scrabble are connected. If I have a good writing day, I'll take a break and play online Scrabble. My favorite word as a child was 'carrion,' before I knew what it meant. I later created crossword puzzles, which was a lot about puns, and how words would create these strange, strange things. ~ Meg Wolitzer

If I send all the books that I faithfully wrote overseas, would that, for any chance, be considered work-shipping?? ~ Ana Claudia Antunes

The first casualty of war is casual wear. ~ Brian Spellman

Puns are the E. coli of humor, ~ Tim Pratt

Xingu!" she scoffed. "Why, it was the fact of our knowing so much more about it than she did - unprepared though we were - that made Osric Dane so furious. I should have thought that was plain enough to everybody! ~ Edith Wharton

Literary puns. She had to admit, she did find that pretty hot. ~ M.R. Carey

That was how we spoke, my mother and I: in puns and games and rhymes. In, you might say, lyrics. This was our tragedy. We were language's magpies by nature, stealing whatever sounded bright and shiny. We were tinpan alleycats, but the gift of music had been withheld. We could not sing along, though we always knew the words. Still, defiantly, we roared our tuneless roars, we fell off the high notes and were trampled by the low ones. And if bitter ices were the consequence, well, there were worse fates in the world than that. ~ Salman Rushdie

Puns are the droppings of soaring wits. ~ Victor Hugo

I couldn't help it: Brendan was abs-olutely pec-tacular, horrible puns intended and very accurate. ~ Cara Lynn Shultz

Are you chuckling yet? Because then along came you. A big, broad meat eater with brash blond hair and ruddy skin that burns at the beach. A bundle of appetites. A full, boisterous guffaw; a man who tells knock know jokes. Hot dogs - not even East 86th Street bratwurst but mealy, greasy big guts that terrifying pink. Baseball. Gimme caps. Puns and blockbuster movies, raw tap water and six-packs. A fearless, trusting consumer who only reads labels to make sure there are plenty of additives. A fan of the open road with a passion for his pickup who thinks bicycles are for nerds. Fucks hard and talks dirty; a private though unapologetic taste for porn. Mysteries, thrillers, and science fiction; a subscription to National Geographic. Barbecues on the Fourth of July and intentions, in the fullness of time, to take up golf. Delights in crappy snack foods of ever description: Burgles. Curlies. Cheesies. Squigglies - you're laughing - but I don't eat them - anything that looks less like food than packing material and at least six degrees of separation from the farm. Bruce Springsteen, the early albums, cranked up high with the truck window down and your hair flying. Sings along, off-key - how is it possible that I should be endeared by such a tin ear?Beach Boys. Elvis - never lose your roots, did you, loved plain old rock and roll. Bombast. Though not impossibly stodgy; I remember, you took a shine to Pearl Jam, which was exactly when Kevin went off them...(sorry). It just had to be no ~ Lionel Shriver

No way, that would kill my diet for the week. I don't know how you can stand to eat so unhealthy, Quinn.
Just consider it an amuse-biatch. ~ Steph Campbell

Fuck, Christina."
"Yes, fuck Christina. I think she'd like that. ~ Nenia Campbell

My parents, worried that I might become popular at school, got me a book of puns at an impressionable age. ~ Alexandra Petri

LAST, n. A shoemaker's implement, named by a frowning Providence as opportunity to the maker of puns. ~ Ambrose Bierce

Sinister is Latin for 'left', making it the sort of enjoyable schoolboy pun that is such an advert for mixed-gender education. ~ Ben Aaronovitch

Graphic design is a visual language uniting harmony and balance, color and light, scale and tension, form and content. But it is also an idiomatic language, a language of cues and puns and symbols and allusions, of cultural references and perceptual inferences that challenge both the intellect and the eye. ~ Jessica Helfand

Zeus Is Dead is full of laugh-out-loud moments, lashings of sly wit, moan-worthy puns, and a complex, fast-paced storyline. There aren't very many humorous fantasy murder mysteries out there, especially not as intricately constructed as this one. Michael G. Munz takes a 'What if,' and runs with it like a toddler with Mom's smart phone. The guffaw-worthy throwaway bits will remind you of Douglas Adams. A very enjoyable read. ~ Jody Lynn Nye

I have mood poisoning. Must be something I hate. ~ Marilyn Manson

The moment I accept that there's an artistic, redeeming quality in puns, I have a horrible feeling I'll get hooked. ~ John Oliver

Imagine (if you dare) a whimsical marriage of Lord Dunsany and S.J. Perelman, and you have something approaching the tales of Rhys Hughes, filled with gaudy colour, slapstick, puns, fantastic creatures, and the occasional unexpected chill. Hughes' world is a magical one - and his language if the most magical thing of all. ~ T.E.D. Klein

It's unpleasantly like being drunk."
"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?"
"You ask a glass of water. ~ Douglas Adams

I'll take her no mistake no mister no missed her no mist no miss no me no. ~ Caryl Churchill

Hey," Nick grunted. "Marriage is just a word for some people, but for others it's a fucking sentence, okay?"
Zane was holding his side. "Oh my God, marriage puns! Oh my God ... "
Nick was trying not to grin, but he finally couldn't help himself. "Once we established I was the victim, then we had to find a girl with a ring on her finger to figure out which one I'd fucking married."
Ty leaned against Zane's arm, laughing so hard he could no longer sit up straight. "The look on his face!"
"He made a marriage pun," Zane gasped. ~ Abigail Roux

Anyway, my writer gang: they kind of did their comedy apprenticeship with me and, during that period, when they were young and impressionable, I think I infected them with my pun virus. They grew to enjoy puns, think puns, just as much as me. The problem is people don't really like puns any more, so I worry I've rendered the poor fuckers virtually unemployable. ~ Frank Skinner

How much do you know of La Mayonnaise?" she inquired.

He shrugged. "Maybe up to the part that goes 'Aux armes, citoyens' - ~ Thomas Pynchon

I found my destination a few miles outside Swelling: a lone, squat, brown bar called The Inn of the Line...The place looked like a dive. Maybe even a plunge. Hell, it was a drowning accident. ~ Elliott James

Okay, you won our shitty little argument. Pass the world. ~ Brian Spellman

Are you calling for help?" Sophie asked when he had closed the phone.
Saint-Germain shook his head. "Ordering breakfast. I'm famished." He jerked his thumb back in the direction of the Eiffel Tower, which was still erupting fireworks. "Creating something like that- if you pardon the pun- burns a lot of calories. ~ Michael Scott

I think the humor of double puns is incredible. ~ Richard Lederer

How are you going to make it move? It doesn't have a – "

"Be very quiet," advised the duke, "for it goes without saying."

And, sure enough, as soon as they were all quite still, it began to move quickly through the streets, and in a very short time they arrived at the royal palace. ~ Norton Juster

Also not the kind of place to hide a server."
"Is that another pun?" She asked.
"No! I swear! I didn't mean that one."

~Shell Game, Kingdom Keepers #5 ~ Ridley Pearson

They are "sexcellent". That is a pun for you, you will find lots of puns on the internet! Also: blonde jokes. ~ Ryan North

Rhyme as an echo not a closing off of sound. Love it. I don't know where the rhymes came from. Or the puns like "no/know" and so on. Just a way my mind start moving toward what seemed urgent to it. I'd like to claim complete rational intent for it all, but it wasn't that way. if you asked me about rhyme thirty years ago, I'd have said: not me, never. And now I done it. ~ Gregory Orr

It is the observer of the pun that makes it, my dear Brumm. Of course, when the word is distorted, as in Evilution, the most preoccupied notice it, but in this instance which you try to fasten upon me the crime is yours. There is nothing more contrary to the Evolutionary will than puns. Bloodshed and desolation follow in their wake. Their English heyday, which was in the reign of James I, caused the great civil war; in France they flourished most rankly under Louis XV, and produced the French Revolution. I have considered puns, and apart altogether from their hateful effect, as shown in history, it is certain that they are quite unevolutionary, because I, the fittest of men, am unable to make them. You will consult your own welfare, and that of the nation, Brougham, by refraining in future. ~ John Davidson

The shot glass is half drunk. ~ Brian Spellman

It occurred to the man that the biggest problem with this staid world was the overwhelming demand for conformity. Everything was so eerily definitive: assent to the mandates of society would see you on the rise, but dissent was a steady downward path. ~ Django Wylie

Wit and puns aren't just decor in the mind; they're essential signs that the mind knows it's on, recognizes its own software, can spot the bugs in its own program. ~ Adam Gopnik

Skinny jeans were only good if you had skinny genes. ~ Matt Dunn

I'm shameless, and I love a pun. There's a lot of Beth puns. ~ Beth Ditto

Biers was where the undead drank. And when Igor the barman was asked for a Bloody Mary, he didn't mix a metaphor. ~ Terry Pratchett

I say 'as it were' or 'so to speak' too often because puns and double entendres keep insinuating themselves into my consciousness as I'm talking. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

He leaned forward and plucked something out of my hair. 'What - ?' He held the dead leaf before me.
'Must have gotten that rolling around with Alexi in the backyard.' I blinked and looked at him. 'That sounded so wrong.'
He nodded, eyebrow quirked. Waiting.
'I'm trying to learn a few things from your more experienced brother so I'm ready for our big event.'
His expression didn't change.
'Yee-ahhh. Not any better, huh?' I laughed. Our big event could mean two vastly different things to Pietr. 'Lemme just run through the other ways I could get this wrong: Alexi's teaching me some moves. He's trying to put the hurt on me. He was putting me into some positions I've never tried before ... I snorted. I couldn't help myself.
A muscle near Pietr's left eye twitched.
'He's teaching me to fight!' I laughed, grabbing his wrists. ~ Shannon Delany

Bite my laughters, drink my tears. Pore into me, volumes, spell me stark and spill me swooning, I just don't care what my thwarters think. ~ James Joyce

I live and die by puns. ~ Feist

We hackers are a playful bunch; we'll hack anything, including language, if it looks like fun (thus our tropism for puns). Deep down, we like confusing people who are stuffier and less mentally agile than we are, especially when they're bosses. There's a little bit of the mad scientist in all hackers, ready to discombobulate the world and flip authority the finger - especially if we can do it with snazzy special effects. ~ Eric S. Raymond

If you live on Statin Island, cholesterol is not a problem. ~ Jon Obermeyer

Never a dull moment," he muttered. They'd been flash and
bang from the first moment they'd met.
"Yeah, well, if you weren't such a dick ... ," Ty murmured with a
small smile.
Zane snickered. "Works out well since you're an asshole."
"We're gonna have to talk about these puns." Ty groaned. ~ Abigail Roux

In the desert you always need water,' [Selethen] told [Horace]. 'A wise traveller never goes past a chance to refill his water skins.'
'Is there nowhere else they could do this?' Halt asked. Selethen tapped another mark into the sand with his dagger.
'There are the Orr-San Wells, he said. 'They're smaller and not as reliable. ~ John Flanagan

I believe in reincarnation," [Bjorn] said.
I KNOW.
"I tried to live a good life. Does that help?"
THAT'S NOT UP TO ME. Death coughed. OF COURSE ... SINCE YOU BELIEVE IN REINCARNATION ... YOU'LL BE BJORN AGAIN. ~ Terry Pratchett

I give people credit for buying into consumerism ~ John Green

The lodgings were on the top floor next to the well-guarded premises of a respectable dealer in stolen property because, as Granny had heard, good fences make good neighbors. ~ Terry Pratchett

Nevertheless, in some ways I had lost touch with many of the currents of French culture and theoretical discussion after the 1960s, and, although any admirer of Queneau and Perec cannot but be sympathetic to the French intellectual tradition of playing games with language, as French thinkers increasingly moved into the territory of 'postmodernism' I found them uninteresting, incomprehensible, and in any case of not much use to historians. Even their puns failed to grip. ~ Eric Hobsbawm

at man's height the mouth utters its cries, tosses forth its oracles, gives vent to its puns. To allow words to come to life, bare themselves, and show us by chance, for the space of a lightning bolt bony with dice, a few of our reasons for living and dying ~ Michel Leiris

Well, land sakes!" Hiro says. "Lookee here!" He whips his blade sideways, cutting off both of the businessman's forearms, causing the sword to clatter onto the floor.
"Better fire up the ol' barbeque, Jemima!" Hiro continues, whipping the sword around sideways, cutting the businessman's body in half just above the navel. Then he leans down so he's looking right into the businessman's face. "Didn't anyone tell you," he says, losing the dialect, "that I was a hacker?"
Then he hacks the guy's head off. ~ Neal Stephenson

I said never mix business with pleasure. They said it was a pleasure doing business with me. ~ Nikhil Sharda

Vimes thought for a moment and said, 'Well, dear, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a man with a lot of wood must be in want of a wife who can handle a great big
~ Terry Pratchett

The Saint whose water can light lamps, the clairvoyant whose lapse in recall is the breath of God, the true paranoid for whom all is organized in spheres joyful or threatening about the central pulse of himself, the dreamer whose puns probe ancient fetid shafts and tunnels of truth all act in the same special relevance to the word, or whatever it is the word is there, buffering, to protect us from. The act of metaphor than was a thrust at truth and a lie, depending where you were: inside, safe or outside, lost. ~ Thomas Pynchon

But the helmet had gold decoration, and the bespoke armorers had made a new gleaming breastplate with useless gold ornamentation on it. Sam Vimes felt like a class traitor every time he wore it. He hated being thought of as one of those people that wore stupid ornamental armor. It was gilt by association. ~ Terry Pratchett

Moaning about how his own brilliance disadvantaged him was not a recipe for popularity. Stanley was initially as isolated in high school as Shirley would be in Rochester: "miserably lonely, reading prodigiously, hating everyone, and wishing I had enough courage to talk to girls." One day a boy he recognized from class sat down next to him in the locker room. Stanley, trying to make conversation as he best knew how, asked his classmate if he read Poe. "No, I read very well, thank you," came the reply. Stanley responded huffily that he didn't think puns were very clever. "I don't either," said the other boy, "but they're something I can't help, like a harelip. ~ Ruth Franklin

So a sense of humor is not merely a matter of trying to tell jokes or make puns, trying to be funny in a deliberate fashion. It involves seeing the basic irony of the juxtaposition of extremes, so that one is not caught taking them seriously, so that one does not seriously play their game of hope and fear. This is why the experience of the spiritual path is so significant, why the practice of meditation is the most insignificant experience of all. ~ Chogyam Trungpa