With a broken-down oven, in a hotel kitchen, on an uninhabited island
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The sound of laughter is like the vaulted dome of a temple of happiness. Milan Kundera
The sound of laughter is like the vaulted dome of a temple of happiness.
Milan Kundera
Laugh and the world laughs with you; snore and you sleep alone. Anthony Burgess
Laugh and the world laughs with you; snore and you sleep alone.
Anthony Burgess
It’s possible to forgive someone a great deal if he makes you laugh. Caroline Llewellyn
It’s possible to forgive someone a great deal if he makes you laugh.
Caroline Llewellyn
To be playful is not to be trivial or frivolous, or to act as if nothing of consequence will happen. On the contrary, when we are playful with one another, we relate as free persons, and the relationship is open to surprise; everything that happens is of consequence, for seriousness is a dread of the unpredictable outcome of open possibility. To be serious is to press for a specified conclusion. To be playful is to allow for unlimited possibility. James Carse
To be playful is not to be trivial or frivolous, or to act as if nothing of consequence will happen. On the contrary, when we are playful with one another, we relate as free persons, and the relationship is open to surprise; everything that happens is of consequence, for seriousness is a dread of the unpredictable outcome of open possibility. To be serious is to press for a specified conclusion. To be playful is to allow for unlimited possibility.
James Carse
I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose. Woody Allen
I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose.
Woody Allen
I don’t think that the comic and the serious can be separated in talking about human reality, any more than you can separate hydrogen and oxygen and still be talking about water. Peter De Vries
I don’t think that the comic and the serious can be separated in talking about human reality, any more than you can separate hydrogen and oxygen and still be talking about water.
Peter De Vries
It was the kind of laughter that caught like briars in her chest and felt very much like pain. Katherine Paterson
It was the kind of laughter that caught like briars in her chest and felt very much like pain.
Katherine Paterson
A patient complaining of melancholy consulted Dr. John Abernethy. After an examination the doctor pronounced, “You need amusement. Go and hear the comedian Grimaldi; he will make you laugh, and that will be better for you than any drugs.” Said the patient, “I am Grimaldi.” Bartlett’s Book of Anecdotes
A patient complaining of melancholy consulted Dr. John Abernethy. After an examination the doctor pronounced, “You need amusement. Go and hear the comedian Grimaldi; he will make you laugh, and that will be better for you than any drugs.” Said the patient, “I am Grimaldi.”
Bartlett’s Book of Anecdotes
Comedy is when you accidentally fall off a cliff and die. Tragedy is when I have a hangnail. Mel Brooks
Comedy is when you accidentally fall off a cliff and die. Tragedy is when I have a hangnail.
Mel Brooks
Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature. Agnes Repplier
Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature.
Agnes Repplier
A comedian is not funny unless he is taking his demons out for a walk. Cynthia Heimel
A comedian is not funny unless he is taking his demons out for a walk.
Cynthia Heimel
One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. “Oh, no,” I said, “Disneyland burned down.” He cried and cried, but I think that, deep down, he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting late. Jack Handey
One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. “Oh, no,” I said, “Disneyland burned down.” He cried and cried, but I think that, deep down, he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting late.
Jack Handey
It’s so damn hard to make jokes work. . . . A joke is like building a mousetrap from scratch. You have to work pretty hard to make the thing snap when it is supposed to snap. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
It’s so damn hard to make jokes work. . . . A joke is like building a mousetrap from scratch. You have to work pretty hard to make the thing snap when it is supposed to snap.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
There are three theories of humor. The Superiority Theory — that you laugh when you realize that you’re better than someone else. Then there’s Freud’s Release Theory, which says that jokes are about ventilating forbidden impulses. . . . All of the psychic energy you used to repress them gets released . . . in chest-heaving, spasmodic laughter. Then there’s the one that makes most sense to me, the Incongruity Theory, that jokes are about the pure intellectual pleasure we take in yanking together things that seem utterly dissimilar and perceiving similarities. . . . That’s the highest form of humor. As jokes get funnier, they rely more on incongruity and less on hostility and superiority or on sex and naughtiness. Jim Holt
There are three theories of humor. The Superiority Theory — that you laugh when you realize that you’re better than someone else. Then there’s Freud’s Release Theory, which says that jokes are about ventilating forbidden impulses. . . . All of the psychic energy you used to repress them gets released . . . in chest-heaving, spasmodic laughter. Then there’s the one that makes most sense to me, the Incongruity Theory, that jokes are about the pure intellectual pleasure we take in yanking together things that seem utterly dissimilar and perceiving similarities. . . . That’s the highest form of humor. As jokes get funnier, they rely more on incongruity and less on hostility and superiority or on sex and naughtiness.
Jim Holt
Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested, and the frog dies of it. E.B. White
Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested, and the frog dies of it.
E.B. White
Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing. William James
Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
William James
The art of the clown is more profound than we think: it is neither tragic nor comic. It is the comic mirror of tragedy and the tragic mirror of comedy. André Suarès
The art of the clown is more profound than we think: it is neither tragic nor comic. It is the comic mirror of tragedy and the tragic mirror of comedy.
André Suarès
Back of the sun and way deep under our feet, at the earth’s center, are not a couple of noble mysteries but a couple of joke books. Tennessee Williams
Back of the sun and way deep under our feet, at the earth’s center, are not a couple of noble mysteries but a couple of joke books.
Tennessee Williams
A good laugh is as good as a prayer sometimes. L.M. Montgomery
A good laugh is as good as a prayer sometimes.
L.M. Montgomery
Lord, forgive all the little tricks I play on you, and I’ll forgive the great big one you played on me. Robert Frost
Lord, forgive all the little tricks I play on you, and I’ll forgive the great big one you played on me.
Robert Frost
© Anna Blackshaw
When I get the February 2009 issue, with an adorable, smiling girl on the cover, I open to Sunbeams to find the theme is “laughter.” I feel deflated. My current mood is dark. My twin sister — my only sibling — died in August. The laughs we had were the best. I feel hostility toward the two laughing men in the Sunbeams photograph; they have what I have lost. Then my eyes fall on one of the quotes: “It was the kind of laughter that caught like briars in her chest and felt very much like pain.” I close the magazine.
Later that evening I am looking through boxes in my parents’ basement when I find my favorite childhood book, Lyddie, by Katherine Paterson. It’s about a tough girl with a hard life who ends up working in a mill. I start reading it the next day, and there, at the end of the first chapter, is the line about “laughter that caught like briars.” Oh, I think.
This evening I have dinner with my housemate and her four-year-old daughter, who exclaims, “Leslie laughs a lot!” I am stunned. Is that how she sees me? I know I still smile; I just can’t feel it. She and your magazine have melted my bitterness a tiny bit.