Mary Roach Quotes

It is quite possible for the vulgar to be funny, but to succeed, it must rise to a certain genius.

This book will prove the following ten facts: 1. A Goon is a being who melts into the foreground and sticks there. 2. Pigs have wings, making them hard to catch. 3. All power corrupts, but we need electricity. 4. When an irresistible force meets an immovable object, the result is a family fight. 5. Music does not always sooth the troubled beast. 6. An Englishman's home is his castle. 7. The female of the species is more deadly than the male. 8. One black eye deserves another. 9. Space is the final frontier, and so is the sewage farm. 10. It pays to increase your word power.

The pun exists in a social and political void, caring nothing for the issues of its day, content merely to display itself in its small cleverness.

You achieve the surreal jokes through the realism by making it elastic.

I went into a French restaraunt and asked the waiter, 'Have you got frog's legs?' He said, 'Yes,' so I said, 'Well hop into the kitchen and get me a cheese sandwich.'

The first thing I ever got my hands on was Andy Griffith's 'What It Was, Was Football.' I was fascinated with the fact that every syllable made it funny, and I would laugh even though I didn't know what any of it meant.

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.

When I'm writing a lyric, things can only get so serious before they start becoming humorous.

There are thousands of ways to make people laugh - satire, black comedy, slapstick.

Lewis Carroll, you see, wasn't really interested in telling an exciting story. Well, he wasn't interested in things like cause and effect or a linear narrative. It's surreal, it's absurd, it's wordplay, it's satirical, it's analyzing itself, it's funny, it's an enormous challenge.

Woody Allen's 'The Complete Prose' - It's just the best selection of comic writing by one author. You know it's good comedy when you get quite demoralised about yourself.

The day after Paul Newman was dead, he was twice as dead.

Bring me an order of escargots, but hold the slugs.

Succotash my Balzac, dipshiitake.

It wasn't until a year later, when a young woman with Danish pastries on either side of her head knelt down in front of a walking dustbin to record an important message, that love truly came to town." - p 16 [re: Princess Leia]

Chuck said, “Hey. How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” Cawley looked over at him. “I’ll bite. How many?” “Fish,” Chuck said and let loose a bright bark of a laugh.

I said to the waitress, "There's a fly swimming in my soup." She said: "You've got too much soup - he should only be able to paddle."

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore, in the Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long, seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

For such is the fate of parody: it must never fear exaggerating. If it strikes home, it will only prefigure something that others will then do without a smile--and without a blush--in steadfast virile seriousness.

We need more fruitcakes in this world, and less bakers!

I ordered a club sandwich, but I'm not even a member. "I like my sandwiches with three pieces of bread." "Well, so do I!" "Then let's form a club." "OK, but we need some more stipulations. Instead of cutting the sandwich once, let's cut it again. Yes, four triangles, arranged in a circle, and in the middle we will dump chips." "How do you feel about frilly toothpicks?" "I'm for 'em!" "Well, this club is formed."

The best thing about Ikea - I'm going to do a quiz here - the names. Do you know what a Floria Fin (ph) is? It's a candle. A Pogestra (ph) - table. A Bar Grick (ph) is a plate, an Eterleeg (ph) is a wine glass and a Scuggle (ph) is the name of my third nipple.

Please, amigo. We need you, Kimosabe, O Mighty Powerful One. We need you more than the earth rises in the west." The sun rises in the east, dickhead." Only if you're standing on the earth. If you're on the moon, the earth rises in the west.

MAGNETISM, n. Something acting upon a magnet. The two definitions immediately foregoing are condensed from the works of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human knowledge.

I have no sex appeal and it has screwed me up for life; my gynecologist examines me by telephone.