Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes

Absolute seriousness is never without a dash of humor.

Humor and seriousness are not in opposition to each other.

My poems... the ones that start out as jokes become these big ponderous things and the ones that start out ponderous devolve into jokes.

What bothers most critics of my work is the goofiness. One reviewer said I need to make up my mind if want to be funny or serious. My response is that I will make up my mind when God does, because life is a commingling of the sacred and the profane, good and evil. To try and separate them is fallacy.

I try to play serious scenes a little funny and the comedy a little serious.

Life is dramatic and comedic at times. Sometimes in the most dramatic situations, there is comedy. And good comedy comes from a sense of reality.

I don't think it's possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor.

The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

In everything I write, I'm always striving to hit the right mix of light and darkness, humor and pain, fun and seriousness.

There is nothing that is so serious that you can't also see its comic side. Comedy is a way of talking about the most serious things.

In life, there's a ying and a yang and a balance. And when you don't have balance, you have comedy.

On one level, I am a massive joker and can't take anything seriously, but on the other hand, I'm incredibly serious and a deep thinker, so I have that dichotomy within me.

I like things that are over the top and subtle at the same time.

Life was never anything but a perpetual see-saw between gravity and jest.

One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious.

People find it hard to be both comic and serious, though life manages it easily enough.

Serious things cannot be understood without laughable things, nor opposites at all without opposites.

I think the best-written films or television series have a measure of the opposite of what they are.

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

When I define polarities in my work, I actually create the space between things. I point to the question I am actually interested in, without naming it.

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.

Everything in life is gray, you know.

The best way to make the most serious point in the world is to be as unserious as possible.

When you see things upside down, the ego can be extraordinarily funny; it's absurd. But it's tragic at the same time.