Clown Quotes & Sayings

You tear me down just to build me up again. All I can think is: you are a psycho-clown. — Coco J. Ginger

I wasn't a class clown, because nuns have no sense of humor. They have rulers. — Dan Alatorre

I didn't really know who I was, but improv had taught me that I could be anyone. I didn't have to wait to be cast - I could give myself the part. I could be an old man or a teenage babysitter or a rodeo clown. In three short years Chicago had taught me that I could decide who I was. My only job was to surround myself with people who respected and supported that choice. Being foolish was the smartest thing to do. — Amy Poehler

Fuck hope and all the tiny little towns, one-horse towns, the one-stoplight towns, three-bars country-music jukebox-magic parquet-towns, pressure-cooker pot-roast frozen-peas bad-coffee married-heterosexual towns, crying-kids-in-the-Oldsmobile-beat-your-kid-in the-Thriftway-aisles towns, one-bank one-service-station Greyhound-Bus-stop-at-the-Pepsi-Cafe towns, two-television towns, Miracle Mile towns, Viv's Double Wide Beauty Salon towns, schizophrenic-mother towns, buy-yourself-a-handgun towns, sister-suicide towns, only-Injun's-a-dead-Injun towns, Catholic-Protestant-Mormon-Baptist religious-right five-churches Republican-trickle-down-to-poverty family-values sexual-abuse pro-life creation-theory NRA towns, nervous-mother rodeo-clown-father those little-town-blues towns. — Tom Spanbauer

I was never the class clown or anything like that. When I was growing up and doing theatre in Seattle I was always doing very dramatic work. Now I can't get a dramatic role to save my life! — Anna Faris

I look like a hobo?" "Worse," he said. "Like a sad hobo clown." "And you like it?" "I love it." As soon as he said it, she broke into a smile. And when Eleanor smiled, something broke inside of him. Something always did. — Rainbow Rowell

Sometimes It feels like time is an evil clown that we always imagine. It gives you everything you ask for, and when you are about to happily embrace every gift that you have received it snatches away everything laughing and clapping at you, watching you fall on your knees and break into pieces. — Akshay Vasu

I was a class clown since second grade. — Eric Andre

I'm not a clown but I'm not an academic either. — Tom Verlaine

You see, this heart, won't settle down; just like a child, running, scared, from a clown. — Demi Lovato

If asked to name the definitive image in Lovecraft, one might likely say its tentacles flailing from the body of a monster. For me it would be probably be puppets, manikins, and clown-like things, even though these are more often a matter of metaphor than a literal presence of a monstrous type. Nevertheless, if Lovecraft's tentacle monsters and my puppets and so on fought each other, I think the monsters would win. — Thomas Ligotti

Be like Allan Pearl. Sit next to the class clown and study him. Then grow up, take everything you learned, and get paid to be a real-life clown, unlike whatever unexciting thing the actual high school class clown is doing now. — Mindy Kaling

I was this kid who never sat down. Nobody liked me? Well, I'd make sure they'd like me. I was the class clown, always doing crazy stuff and causing riots. — Bas Rutten

I remember seeing Extreme play with [Debra] Winger and Cinderella. Gary Cherone was wearing purple velvet overalls with no shirt and saddle oxfords.Afterward, I went home and told my mom, "I need to find saddle oxfords." And she said, "Like little girls wear?" Naturally, I couldn't find them in my size, so I went to a shoemaker and had him make me a pair. I wore them for a while, but they didn't seem as cool on me, because when your foot is size 12, they sort of look like clown shoes. — Patrick Wilson

I'm funny. I'm a comedian. I'm not a clown. — Bernie Mac

I learned that when people see a dachshund, they have to yell, "A wiener dog!" Like "A rainbow!" "A Shriner!" "A shooting star!" "A clown!" "A nudist colony! — Kevin Kling

I got through my teen years by being a bit of a clown. — Diane Cilento

The child's laughter is pure until he first laughs at a clown. — Angela Carter

Clowns are always creepy! — Kate Bush

You know the evil that men do, hell is where the men go.
We snatched him by his hands and feet and threw him out the window:
"Up, up, and away cause I don't play, clown,
Buck, buck, buck, take that with you on the way down."
I'm hoping you got springs and wings on your shoes,
But you lose, because I got the Ill Street Blues. — Kool G Rap

The clown was an evil one. They're either good or bad, and this one was definitely the latter. — Chris Thrall

I am not a sad clown. I am not a sad clown. — Nathan Lane

Uncertain whose the narrowest span,
the clown unread, or half-read gentleman. — John Dryden

I learn from him around the campfire that he and the Howlers, Thistle, Screwface, Clown, Weed, and Pebble - the dregs of my old House - stayed no longer than a day after I disappeared. — Pierce Brown

You never have a comedian who hasn't got a very deep strain of sadness within him or her. Every great clown has been very near to tragedy. — Margaret Rutherford

People speak of the fear of the blank canvas as though it is a temporary hesitation, a trembling moment of self-doubt. For me it was more like being abducted from my bed by a clown, thrust into a circus arena with a wicker chair, and told to tame a pissed-off lion in front of an expectant crowd. — Hannah Kent

I hate when I break my own rules. What's the point of me being rational if I flail around like a clown? — Jesse Ball

A lot of times, as a clown, you find acting for a reason. It's a way to exercise yourself. If you're funny, you test yourself. — Matthew Lillard

CLOWN. Fare thee well. Remain thou still in darkness: thou shalt hold the opinion of Pythagoras ere I will allow of thy wits; and fear to kill a woodcock, lest thou dispossess the soul of thy grandam. Fare thee well. — William Shakespeare

When a clown kills somebody, that's new - that's something you've never seen before. Here's someone you thought was good, and he's doing something so terrible that normal human emotion can't even deal with it - and then he turns around and does something good again. That's fascinating. It's not weird to be obsessed with that, it's weird not to be. — Dan Wells

You become funny for a reason. I became an actor because that's who I was, nothing else - it was the only thing I was good at. You become a clown and you make people laugh because a) it protects you from everything, and b) it's this validating force in your life. And when you're 12 and 13 years old, you need validation and you're lost and you're kind of floating and you suffer from a severe learning disability and you're overweight and you have glasses ... you become funny for a reason. — Matthew Lillard

Nothing is more unbecoming to a teacher of the Word than flippancy. He must be serious and should not act like a clown. — Martin Luther

I was just school class clown and that was it. Someday I'll get a job as a cab driver or whatever. — John Leguizamo

I always tell people that if you get upset over what someone says, imagine him or her with a clown's nose on and you won't get so angry. — Bernie Glassman

Every time the circus comes to town, I can't help thinking, Somewhere out there, there's clown semen. — Dana Gould

At no time in the history of man has the world been so full of pain and anguish. Here and there, however, we meet with individuals who are untouched, unsullied, by the common grief. We say of them that they have died to the world. They live in the moment, fully, and the radiance which emanates from them is a perpetual song of joy [ ... ] like the clown, we go through the motions, forever simulating, forever postponing the grand event- we die struggling to get born. We never were, never are. We are always in the process of becoming. Forever outside — Henry Miller

I hesitate to say I was the class clown, but that was kind of how I interacted with other kids in school, and I very much appreciated the responses I got. The validation of laughter is often a very heavy psychological balm. — Simon Pegg

A clown needn't be the same out of the ring as he has to be when he's in it. If you look at photographs of clowns when they're just being ordinary men, they've got quite sad faces. — Enid Blyton

Eve wasn't sure what right the clown had to butcher the poor girl like that. In fact, most horror movies made her angry. Though the 'final girl' usually got out alive, she was stripped of so much by the time the credits rolled. — Christa Carmen

The role of a clown and a physician are the same - it's to elevate the possible and to relieve suffering. — Patch Adams

Up ahead stands the fun house, which you enter through a clown's smiling mouth.
"I would kill myself if I was prisoner here," Shelby says.
"No, you wouldn't, just out of courtesy," I say, "because your body would be trapped in there after you die, and your friends would have to watch your corpse rot."
"Hmm," Shelby says. "Smell it too."
"Well, now we're looking on the bright side," Packard says. — Carolyn Crane

But if as you read this book you're saying to yourself: "I'd rather be miserably married than be alone." Well young lady, take out your clown shoes and buckle your seat belt - it's going to be a very bumpy one-woman circus. — Osayi Emokpae Lasisi

I think of game development as a clown car moving through tall grass, — Ken Rolston

Sunny laughed. "It's okay. You're right, Emma. My name is unusual, but I like to think of it as ... special also."
Special?
Sam cocked his head as he studied Sunny. Almost all of her hair had escaped out of her ponytail now. She wore a baggy pink sweatshirt and had on the kind of drawstring plaid pants that would've set Bozo the Clown's heart pitter-pattering with envy. Her yellow tennis shoes were covered with dog hair.
Yeah, special was one word for her. — Jennifer Shirk

It really depends on what the screenplay is asking of you, and what your responsibility is to that character. You have the author's intent to deal with, you have the filmmaker's vision, and then you have your own wants, desires and needs for the character. It's collaborative. But I knew, right off the bat, that there was no way to go into some sort of pink-haired, clown-nosed character with Ronald McDonald shoes. — Johnny Depp

The only exercise guru then was Richard Simmons - a flamboyant fuzzy-haired creature who vaguely resembled a gay Bozo the Clown, unless that's redundant, which I, thank God, have no way of knowing, having no, thank God, direct — Carrie Fisher

I think I always was a bit of a class clown, but I don't know how successful I was at that. I always think, when I read about people being class clowns, I imagine them being actually very funny, and I don't know that I was. But I tried to be, I think. — Chris Parnell

As the husband is the wife is; thou art mated with a clown, As the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

I tell you what. 85 percent of the sportswriters think I'm stupid or a clown or something. They think I'm crazy. — Joaquin Andujar

Clown: Good Madonna, why mournest thou?
Olivia: Good Fool, for my brother's death.
Clown:I think his soul is in hell, Madonna.
Olivia:I know his soul is in heaven, Fool.
Clown: The more fool, Madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul being in heaven. — William Shakespeare

There was a clown in the stormdrain. — Stephen King

The day I need a television puppet or clown to tell my children what's right and what's wrong, I'll bow out as a mother. — Elinor Smith

I wasn't a class clown, I never developed this comedic flair as a kid. Even when I decided to become an actor, it was just to be an actor, not necessarily a comedic actor. I wasn't that guy who struck out with women so he became really funny, and that's when the women started to like him. — Steve Carell

With apologies to Judy Garland and Cole Porter, all the world does NOT love a clown. John Wayne Gacy might have been the final nail in the coffin in terms of anyone associating clowns with funny (if a bunch of clowns die, do they all fit into one coffin?) — Christopher Lombardo

Buchanan's constant crowing about his great victory only added to the perception that he was a clown; a blithering buffoon. — C.L. Gammon

I took the Nuban's bow. I didn't trust the midget to be able to run down any thieves, and besides, I might want to shoot a circus clown or two. Just for laughs. — Mark Lawrence

Nat is already laughing. We go through this every morning. She tells Nik I own a clown car.
I glower at her while I put my foot up onto Nik's lap and kick the passenger door while turning the ignition.
She starts.
Works every time.
Nik looks like he's not sure whether to laugh or get the hell out of the car.
We're on our way to work and Nat says, "Nik, turn on the radio."
He shakes his head and replies cynically, "I would but I'm scared the roof might fly off."
Nat and I burst into laughter. We laugh so much we both sob and laugh at the same time. — Belle Aurora

NOW CAME OUR INTRODUCTION to Smiley, former rodeo clown, whose name outside the costume might as well have been Cranky as Hell. — Ivan Doig

I'm training to become a giggle doctor. It's a kind of hospital clown who changes the atmosphere on the ward and helps recovery. It's about making patients laugh but also much more. — Nina Conti

Wonder. As I wonder if somewhere out in this storm there is a clown selling balloons tonight. — Stephen King

The Vienna Boys Choir decked out in top hats and evil clown make-up could be directly next to me pole-vaulting over giant rotating knives and I'd never know because I'm gazing into the distance deliberating some vaguely imperceptible angst. — Bill Gray

John Kerry made a joke about Bush being a moron, and now Bush wants morons to think it was a joke was about the troops ... Now, John Kerry has apologized. He said he made a botched joke and admitted that he has a joking problem. He has checked into an improv group and revealed that as a child, he was molested by a clown. — Bill Maher

As a kid I was always a bit of a clown, a performer. — Simon Baker

Josh Funk and Hunter Fraser: we haven't been in touch in years, but you made me feel like the funniest kid in the world. I would stay up late on school nights to write things to try to make you laugh the next day in class, and you inspired the one piece of advice on writing that I've ever felt qualified to give: write for the kid sitting next to you. — B.J. Novak

The United States is the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, yet its inhabitants are strikingly unhappy. Accordingly, we present to the rest of mankind, on a planet rife with suffering and tragedy, the spectacle of a clown civilization. Sustained on a clown diet rich in sugar and fat, we have developed a clown physiognomy. We dress like clowns. We move about a landscape filled with cartoon buildings in clownmobiles, absorbed in clownish activities. We fill our idle hours enjoying the canned antics of professional clowns ... Death, when we acknowledge it, is just another pratfall on the boob tube. Bang! You're dead! — James Howard Kunstler

I'm not this callous clown walking around laughing at life all the time. I've had some serious, serious problems in my life. But I've come out with a smile. — John Lydon

Yo momma's breath smells so bad I don't know if I should give her a Tic Tac or a piece of toilet paper. Yo — THE CLOWN FACTORY

Titian, Rembrandt and Goya were the great painters. I am only a public clown. — Pablo Picasso

One day he said, "I'll tell this town How it feels to be an unfunny clown." And he told them all why he looked so sad, And he told them all why he felt so bad. He told of Pain and Rain and Cold, He told of Darkness in his soul, And after he finished his tale of woe, Did everyone cry? Oh no, no, no, They laughed until they shook the trees ... And while the world laughed outside. Cloony the Clown sat down and cried. — Shel Silverstein

My ideas are a curse.
They spring from a radical discontent
with the awful order of things.
I play clown. I play carpenter. I play nurse.
I play witch. — Anne Sexton

Comedy is obviously a matter of personal taste and the world always needs a clown and some people have no taste at all and any clown will do. — Marc Maron

She had thought, instinctively, that Victoria had a remarkably beautiful face. The face showed an alert awareness of life: her lips- full, overblown like clown-lips liable to laugh at the slightest provocation. She thought that her features were not chiseled but almost rugged, handsome, like a colloquial swear-word or a Vermeer peasant-girl, and a knock out at that. An overdone face, like one having two chins, two noses, that was big and abundantly cheerful but at the same time, there was a peculiarly puffy look about those eyes.'
('Left from Dhakeshwari') — Kunal Sen

Sometimes, I get in a mindset where I don't like my own music. I hate yourself and my music because I'm doing it every day. I feel like a clown. — Nicolas Jaar

A clown can get away with murder. — John Wayne Gacy

In the high school classroom you are a drill sergent, a rabbi, a shoulder to cry on, a disciplinarian, a singer, a low-level scholar, a clerk, a referee, a clown, a counselor, a dress-code enforcer, a conductor, an apologist, a philosopher, a collaborator, a tap dancer, a politician, a therapist, a fool, a traffic cop, a priest, a mother-father-brother-sister-uncle-aunt, a bookeeper, a critic, a psychologist, the last straw. — Frank McCourt

The Clown turned his powdered face to the mirror.
"If to be fair is to be beautiful," he said, "who can compare with me in my white mask?"
"Who can compare with him in his white mask?" I asked Death beside me.
"Who can compare with me?" said Death, "for I am paler still."
"You are very beautiful," sighed the Clown, turning his powdered face from the mirror. — Robert W. Chambers

I remember having friends in high school that did the theater department stuff, and I always wanted to try it but never had the guts to. I was the class clown but could never really build up the courage to try it. I took one acting class and really enjoyed it. — Robert Buckley

I stood and looked at the large framed painting of the Pierrot clown that hung on her wall and sympathised with the tears that rolled down its cheek. Like the clown, I felt contained within a frame, the only difference being my tears were not for public show. — Eileen Munroe

They're [zombies] us, you can also have the wrestler zombie, the clown zombie, the Jay Leno zombie and the nun zombie. I've never seen the clown werewolf or vampire. But because zombies are us, at the lowest possible level, they're a lot more versatile for storytelling. — Tom Savini

Hey guys, what did the lion say after eating the clown?" The boys stopped. One looked confused, but the other grinned. "What?" he called. "I don't know about you, but I think that tasted kind of funny. — Erin Nicholas

Mrs. Convoy leaned into the desk, flattening her knuckles on it like a linebacker bracing against the hard earth, and with eyeballs floating above her bifocals asked why I felt it necessary to sit in my own waiting room during peak hours. I told her, she said, "And how is the 'complete experience'?" I told her, she said, "And do you think the 'complete experience' might be enhanced by a dentist who tends to his patients in a timely manner?" I told her, she said, "We will not get a reputation for being a drill-and-bill shop just because you tend to patients in a timely manner. Jesus Mary and Joseph," she said. "Sometimes I think we all work for Toots the Clown. — Joshua Ferris

No clowns were funny. That was the whole purpose of a clown. People laughed at clowns, but only out of nervousness. The point of clowns was that, after watching them, anything else that happened seemed enjoyable — Terry Pratchett

I didn't even know what a film director was. To me, Charlie Chaplin was a goofy clown, and John Ford - what? Never heard of him. — Lloyd Kaufman

At the end of the day this is nothing more than a blog. It's nice to hit them high notes - but REALLY - how significant do you think something that sort of sounds like the sound of a flatulent frog being run over by a clown car really needs to be? — Steve Vernon

Damn everything but the circus! ... The average 'painter' 'sculptor' 'poet' 'composer' 'playwright' is a person who cannot leap through a hoop from the back of a galloping horse, make people laugh with a clown's mouth, orchestrate twenty lions. — E. E. Cummings

I get bored with the constant probing for the cliched tears of the clown, the dark side of the comic. — Chris Lilley

Dr. Jubal Harshaw, professional clown, amateur subversive, and parasite by choice, had long attempted to eliminate "hurry" and all related emotions from his pattern. Being aware that he had but a short time left to live and having neither Martian nor Kansan faith in his own immortality, it was his purpose to live each golden moment as if it were eternity - without fear, without hope, but with sybaritic gusto. — Robert A. Heinlein

I realized that democracy is indivisible, or rather, that freedom is indivisible. There are many clown-democracies in the Arab world, which have nothing to do with freedom. — Walid Jumblatt

My high school guidance counselor, Mrs. Inverholl, once had me take an aptitude test to figure out my future. The number one job recommendation for my set of skills was an air traffic accident investigator, of which there are fewer than fifty in the world. The number two job was a museum curator for Chinese-American studies. The number three job was a circus clown. — Jodi Picoult

Let me ask you: Who do you prefer, a clown organizing your menu - with all due respect to Mr. McDonald - or a chef? I do believe it's a very simple answer. — Jose Andres

Wagner Doctor Faustus' student and servant: "Alas, poor slave! See how poverty jests in his nakedness. I know the villain's out of service, and so hungry that I know he would give his soul to the devil for a shoulder of mutton, though it were blood raw."
Robin a clown: "Not so, neither! I had need to have it well roasted, and good sauce to it, if I pay so dear, I can tell you. — Christopher Marlowe

I was always the class clown; I made my family laugh, and that was when I was always happiest. I grew up listening to stand-up comedians' albums and watching them on TV, on 'The Tonight Show' and Letterman. — Sarah Silverman

I hate clowns and I would never do anything getting near a clown, I can't go to the circus. — Ty Simpkins

I built a reputation as a songwriter in the industry before my own hits. People were used to coming to me for songs. There were songs like 'Clown' and 'Mountains' that were my songs that I wanted to keep. But the record labels saw me as a songwriter. It was hard to get people to believe in me as an artist. — Emeli Sande

For a Clown, Death is Closing the gate on all Daily humiliations. — Kambiz Shabankareh

For a moment he felt a wild hope: perhaps this really was a nightmare. Perhaps he would awake in his own bed, bathed in sweat, shaking, maybe even crying ... but alive. Safe. Then he pushed the thought away. Its charm was deadly, its comfort fatal. — Stephen King

I was sort of the class-clown type, and I was also in school plays, and I always liked comedy. — Rachel Dratch

I'm a real paradox. Because I'm a very serious person, and I take my work very seriously. But I wrap it up in a court jester and a clown and make people laugh and make them feel good about themselves. — Richard Simmons

I think a lot of people assume from my music and stuff I'm constantly talking about deep and meaningful things, but then with my friends I'm just a class clown. — Ella Henderson

My school was really small, but I was called the Class Clown! — Serena Williams