All humour is critical, you know? You make stupid jokes. I mean, stupidity is an infirmity, isn't it?
British humour is very cruel. It's my favourite kind of humour; if it isn't cruel and funny it doesn't really cut the cake for me.
Satire is an art best practiced behind the back of the intended target. I think inviting politicians on a satirical show becomes a very big trap. Because one of two things happen: Either you have to kind of unsharpen your fangs because you can't be quite as cruel to people to their face as you are behind their backs... Or you don't defang, and those guests get the word and they stop coming.
A sharp tongue is the only edge tool that grows keener with constant use.
It was one of Hulu's first original shows to really go out there. Now a year has passed, and the second season is getting a great response. I think the show [Difficult People] itself creatively has evolved, has gotten much richer and tighter.
Politically Incorrect was the name of the show Bill Maher hosted in the 1990s. It's also an apt description of the man himself. Now host of - HBO's hit show Real Time, I find Maher to be one of the sharpest observers of American politics and life in general out there. It doesn't mean I always agree with him. I always find him funny, though.
I'm a silly guy, I love wit and cynicism and sarcasm.
I'm keeping my acerbic wit completely fueled.
A satirist is someone who has a very skeptical view of human nature, but who still has the optimism to make some sort of a joke out of it. However brutal that joke might be.
I only met Joan Rivers once. But when she passed away, it felt like a part of me went away, too.
Donald Trump's humor is hostile to a fault.
Zingers should glow with intelligence as well as drip with contempt.
Sarcasm is an abuse of the intellect.
I love insult, it's always honest.
People, particularly over-moralistic Americans, have often seen me as a pessimist and humourless to boot, yet I think I have an almost maniacal sense of humour. The problem is that it's rather deadpan.
Wit goes for the jugular, not the jocular, and it's the opposite of football; instead of building character, it tears it down.
At the best, sarcasms, bitter irony, scathing wit, are a sort of swordplay of the mind. You pink your adversary, and he is forthwith dead; and then you deserve to be hung for it.
There's no possibility of being witty without a little ill-nature - the malice of a good thing is the barb that makes it stick.
There are certain people whom one feels almost inclined to urge to hurry up and die so that their letters can be published.
For the qualities of sheer wit and humor, Swift had no superior, ancient or modern.
Cynicism is the humour of hatred
There is humor that's just whimsy, that we smile at, but the humor that we laugh at, someone has to be - someone's dignity has to be reduced.
