James Howard Kunstler Quotes

Nihilism in American comedy came along way before 'The Simpsons.' There was a fairly nihilistic point of view to 'Saturday Night Live,' for instance, back in the beginning, and a lot of really dark comedy had a really anti-sentimental take on life.

It can take the uninitiated a minute to realize that 'Gangnam Style' is satire.

Marilyn Manson is a mockery of American pop culture.

You might find me outside with a can of hair spray, spraying it with the hope that the sun will burn a hole in the Earth. Another part of me hopes people will grow up and evolve and get smarter. That's the paradox of Marilyn Manson.

You know, what I like about 'The Family Tree' is it's a kitchen sink movie; you can't think of anything that it doesn't either throw into the story for conflict or poke fun at or attack, even, so I like it.

Everyone seems to see bleakness and despair in my books. I don't read them that way. I see myself as writing comic books, books about ordinary people trying to live ordinary, dull, happy lives while the world is falling to pieces around them.

As satirists, we get to stand on the sidelines of life and comment on what's happening.

I liked 'Repo Man.' Satire.

All my humor is based on destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I'd be standing in the bread line - right in back of J. Edgar Hoover.

Sometimes the very best way to deal with unpleasant things is to depict them in ways that allow people to laugh at them and destroy the power of unsayable things, rather than refusing to acknowledge them.

Monty Python never directly said, 'We're liberals' - they just did their sketches, and you had to figure it out. Generally, they were anti-establishment, of course, making fun of the people in power. I think, comedians, that's their job - pointing out what other people might not notice and going, 'Yoo-hoo, over here.'

I think comedy and satire are the strongest ways to deal with very serious themes and very painful themes.

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.

All comedy is really talking about social issues and things that are affecting our lives.

I definitely have fun commenting on the real world and interpreting through the 'Dear White People' lens.

I've always thought that Lewis Carroll himself had a certain comedy tinge to him. He was a guy who was a satirist. He really was a social commentator in many ways and was trying to satirize Victorian society.

'UnREAL' has always been provocative and bitingly honest, which makes the show what it is.

I tend to find comedy in dark places. I also tend to find comedy in taking on the status quo - which has always been something I find important.

Satire is born of the cities it denounces.

The bipartisan approach filtered up through my typewriter. I used to say, "Mad takes on both sides." We even used to rake the hippies over the coals. They were protesting the Vietnam War, but we took aspects of their culture and had fun with it. Mad was wide open. Bill loved it, and he was a capitalist Republican. I loved it, and I was a liberal Democrat. That went for the writers, too; they all had their own political leanings, and everybody had a voice. But the voices were mostly critical. It was social commentary, after all.

This is not an easy time for humorists because the government is far funnier than we are.

Satire always benefits when evil and stupidity collide.

Most satirists are indeed a public scourge; Their mildest physic is a farrier's purge; Their acrid temper turns, as soon as stirr'd, The milk of their good purpose all to curd. Their zeal begotten, as their works rehearse, By lean despair upon an empty purse.

I'm gonna be a new kind of clown. I'm gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks.

Dawn Of The Dead is about how we're just a country cannibalizing itself, turning into one shopping mall, and everyone at the mall is just brain-dead, wandering around. Capitalism gone awry, and the worst parts of human nature coming out. All these different things that people read into the films that are all there, very strong anti-Bush sentiments that went into making those films. It's great. I like it when people get it the second or third time, when someone else points it out to them. They don't realize it's been there all along. Those are my favorite movies.