Pete Holmes Quotes

Ever since I was a kid, I just loved those comedians on TV who would just have fun with the language.

Comedy is inherently subversive because it turns the normal reality on its head. The art form is all about these questions and contradictions. In comedy, we're dealing with language that we all understand, but words can have a dozen other things around them that alter or affect meaning.

Jerry Seinfeld is amazing in many ways, not the least of them his ability to find humor, and convincing us to find it, too, in the million-and-two details about modern life that under different circumstances might send us into paroxysms of rage.

Humor's a weapon if you want to make it one.

Activism isn't about holding your faults up to the light. That's what comedy is about, it's about saying, 'Look at this person who is so flawed and frail and damaged. And we're all this frail and damaged so let's laugh at it.'

So I rang up my local swimming baths. I said 'Is that the local swimming baths?' He said 'It depends where you're calling from.'

I get just as much of a thrill out of constructing a good sentence that gets a laugh at the end as I do from a joke.

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.

Stand-up comics reflect less of a visual humor and more of a commentary.

I find the closer you get to people, the harder it is to satirise them.

Time flies like an arrow - but fruit flies like a banana.

Caricatures speak through visual language and are therefore understandable by all people. They trigger a laugh which is also an international language and reaction. Caricatures can decrease violence and converge cultures. They aim to promote peace, and teach us to be moderate and laugh at our problems.

I listened to George Carlin when I was a kid and knew every word of his routines.

Laughter is the best way to get over something or get closer to something. It's one of the things I respect most about Amy Schumer. She's found a way to get us closer to ourselves and see the ugly side of humanity, but not in a way that's pointing a finger or that's angry. She does it in a way that makes us see the absurdity and laugh at it.

Comedy is a reaction to the world, and I think it really helps to be an outsider. I've always been very interested in people's behavior, to the point of being obsessed - seeing what people needed and reading them, I think that's the backbone of comedy.

I've always thought George Carlin was brilliant.

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.

In Hebrew, the name Susan means 'graceful lily' - in Khmer, it means 'girl with the bad puns,' and in ancient Aztec, it translates as 'she with the cockerel hair and dirty glasses.'

My imagination? No, I don't think it's VIVID at all. On the contrary, it's not nearly potent enough. My poor imaginative faculties have always needed...extentions. That's why I'm here with you. You're smiling again, or rather you're SMIRKING. Funny word, smirk. Rather like an extraterrestrial surname. Simon Smirk. How do you think that sounds?

Oh dear,' said Eddie. 'We'd better hurry. Tinto, call me a cab.' All right,' said Tinto. 'You're a cab.

irony is an indispensable ingredient of the critical vision; it is the safest antidote to sentimental decay.

A really good stand-up comic is a poet; it's about the use of language. It can be really poetic. And I like politically conscious comedy.

Satirize wickedness if you must--but pity weakness.

Knowing comedy is knowing human nature.

Rectory always sounded to me like a place where you would find a proctologist.