Good Funny Writing Quotes & Sayings

I listened to my first comedy album in 6th grade. It was Bill Cosby. My brother and I would play it over and over on a Fisher Price record player. A friend in high school also introduced me to Richard Pryor. I wasn't writing material back then, but I would say funny stuff. I was good at making fun of people's moms. If I knew something personal about you, it would be used against you. — Felipe Esparza

You know, I think some people fear that if they like the wrong kind of book, it will reflect poorly on them. It can go with genre, too. Somebody will say, "I won't read science fiction, or I won't read young adult novels" - all of those genres can become prisons. I always find it funny when the serious literary world will make a little crack in its wall and allow in one pet genre writer and crown them and say, "Well Elmore Leonard is actually a real writer." Or "Stephen King is actually a really good writer." Generally speaking, you know you're being patronized when somebody uses the word "actually — Elizabeth Gilbert

The recipe for great art has always been misery and a good bowel movement. — Don Roff

Ooh!" Willy pipes up. "Maybe he'll write a story about Santa and Mrs. Claus getting caught with their pants down with other people. If we get lucky, maybe he'll kill-"

"Don't finish that sentence, elf."

"Randy, you're such a spoilsport. You can't say you haven't conjured up that scenario in your big head a time or a dozen. Continue. Maybe I'll write that story."

"No, you won't. Your idea of a good story is nothing but sex, sex, and more sex. You'd never make it through writing a chapter because you'd have to stop and jerk off a half dozen times."

"Ew! Not about Santa and Mrs. Claus. Yuck," Willy comes back at him with a sour look on his face. "That's not even funny, Randy. — Candi Kay

Sex is hard to write about because you lose the universal and succumb to the particular. We all have our different favorites. Good sex is impossible to write about. Lawrence and Updike have given it their all, and the result is still uneasy and unsure. It may be that good sex is something fiction just can't do
like dreams. Most of the sex in my novels is absolutely disastrous. Sex can be funny, but not very sexy. — Martin Amis

I don't change the language for children books. I don't make the language simpler. I use words that they might have to look up in the dictionary. The books are shorter, but there's just not that much difference other than that to be honest. And the funny thing is, I have adult writer friends [to whom I would say], "Would you think of writing a children's book?" and they go, "No, God, I wouldn't know how." They're quite intimidated by the concept of it. And when I say to children's books writers, would they write an adult book, they say no because they think they're too good for it. — John Boyne

A good story should provoke discussion, debate, argument ... and the occasional bar fight. — J. Michael Straczynski

You know how it is with writing. You just write what you want to write. There's no way to predict what is good or bad. You just do what you think is funny, and either it works or you're finished. It's impossible to predict anything. — Colin Quinn

If the writing is good, then the writing is already funny. All you have to do is make this funny writing true to the very deepest of your heart, and the fact that you are capable of making this true will be hysterical. — Constance Wu

There is a lot of catarsis that passes itself off as art or comedy and I'm kind of critical of that. I think that just because you bare your soul or underwear or private moments it doesn't , or necessarily make for entertainment, or good writing, or funny writing. — Mindy Kaling

As an actor you get categorized by other people, but it's not like I arrange myself into comedy mode or serious mode. If it's good writing you just have to play it true - if it's funny, it's funny. But obviously you don't want it to be amusing if you're playing Hedda Gabler! — Sophie Thompson

Women can do anything men can do. Except math, chess, running, jumping, lifting stuff, fixing things, making money, hockey, surfing, driving, making decisions, being tall, taking out the garbage, tipping, fishing, being funny (on purpose), reading a map, listening to good bands, writing, running the country, inventing anything important, or being fun to hang out with. — Daniel Tosh

I want my online content to be so good that Google's web crawler stops and says "Dayyyum son! — Ryan Lilly

A good approach is to allow one dream per novel. Then, in the final revision, go back and get rid of that, too. — Howard Mittelmark

I did some writing for that movie. The remake of Planet of the Apes. I didn't write the script. But I wrote some lines that they ended up ... not using ... I wrote one line. I thought it would've been perfect. I don't know if anyone saw the movie. It's the scene where the ape general comes in. And they're trying to decide if they should attack right there, or wait until a little later. And I wrote: "Man these bananas are good!" But they didn't use it. I did all of that research. — Brian Regan

Writing is such lonely work that I try to keep myself cheered up. If something strikes me as funny in the act of writing, I throw it in just to amuse myself. If I think it's funny I assume a few other people will find it funny, and that seems to me to be a good day's work. — William Zinsser

I like to skip prewriting. I love just jumping into the actual writing process. Then I revise/edit and fix what I need to. Then the following steps; proofread and publish. Of course before you just go into writing, it would be a good idea to do some charts of each chapter ... what you would want each one to be about and have a character list with their personalities and how they will come into play in your book. I mean, you wouldn't just want to go all crazy and jot down all kinds of random stuff at once ... trust me, you'll go crazy. With writing, you take it as it comes, go with your own flow.-Nina Jean Slack — Nina Jean Slack

Would you like me to write Mrs. Ames about inviting you to Yaddo? Get Miss Moore to write too. You can't invite yourself, though, of course, almost all the invitations are planned. It would be marvelous to have you there. I know the solitude that gets too much. It doesn't drug me, but I get fantastic and uncivilized.
At last my divorce [from Jean Stafford] is over. It's funny at my age to have one's life so much in and on one's hands. All the rawness of learning, what I used to think should be done with by twenty-five. Sometimes nothing is so solid to me as writing - I suppose that's what vocation means - at times a torment, a bad conscience, but all in all, purpose and direction, so I'm thankful, and call it good, as Eliot would say. — Robert Lowell

Writers are cannibals. They really are. They are predators, and if you are friends with them, and if you say anything funny at dinner, or if anything good happens to you, you are in big trouble. — Nora Ephron

A lot of movies that come from Israel are about war, but there is such good, funny, rounded writing that comes from the country that I wish more people would discover. — Odeya Rush

It's funny how you can struggle with one piece and write a better one in a minute. When things come easy, it means it's good. — Joe Satriani

One ought not to fall in love with someone by way of their writing. One must be especially careful if the writing is good, for then one assumes the writer is good, funny, clever, profound, sensitive, smart, wise, loving, and true. It is unfair to the writer and dangerous to the reader to hold the writer to the standards of his writing, for in his writing, the writer is his best self; in person, he is a person, and we all know what that means. — Jane Juska

I would like to do a lot more of it, I feel comfortable with it and basically it's all in the writing. I'm not a personality type actor, I need a good script in order to be funny, but it's definitely something that I like doing. — Ray Liotta

The first problem of any kind of even limited success is the unshakable conviction that you are getting away with something, and that at any moment now they will discover you. It's Imposter Syndrome, something my wife Amanda christened The Fraud Police.

In my case, I was convinced that there would be a knock on the door, and a man with a clipboard (I don't know why he carried a clipboard, in my head, but he did) would be there, to tell me it was all over, and they had caught up with me, and now I would have to go and get a real job, one that didn't consist of making things up and writing them down, and reading books I wanted to read. — Neil Gaiman

I got it! I got it!" Heeb declared triumphantly. Evan stopped in the middle of his kitchenette to hear Heeb's idea.
"Sex in the Title."
"Yeah, that's what you've been saying I need."
"No, that's the title: 'Sex in the Title.'"
"You want me to call my novel 'Sex in the Title?'"
"Yeah. Isn't it great? — Zack Love

When you're in Hollywood and you're a comedian, everybody wants you to do other things. All right, you're a stand-up comedian, can you write us a script? That's not fair. That's like if I worked hard to become a cook, and I'm a really good cook, they'd say, "OK, you're a cook. Can you farm?" — Mitch Hedberg

The only good teachers for you are those friends who love you, who think you are interesting, or very important, or wonderfully funny; whose attitude is:
"Tell me more. Tell me all you can. I want to understand more about everything you feel and know and all the changes inside and out of you. Let more come out."
And if you have no such friend,
and you want to write,
well, then you must imagine one. — Brenda Ueland

I have written it before and am not ashamed to write it again. Without Wodehouse I am not sure that I would be a tenth of what I am today
whatever that may be. In my teenage years, his writings awoke me to the possibilities of language. His rhythms, tropes, tricks and mannerisms are deep within me.
But more than that, he taught me something about good nature. It is enough to be benign, to be gentle, to be funny, to be kind. — Stephen Fry

Writing a funny story is one thing. But writing a funny story that inspires others to venture beyond their level of comfort in pursuit of their greater good is what makes me come alive. — Romany Malco

Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand. — Martin Fowler

Like with 'Parks and Recreation,' it's so much fun because the people writing it are funny and they're open and you just go in there and have a good time. It's pretty much the easiest job I've ever had. — Aziz Ansari

I first got into writing because I got involved in the production of a magazine for army wives. They were short of copy one day and the editor asked me to write a piece about being an army wife "and make it funny". Good at obeying orders I did as I was told, the piece was a success, I was asked to write a regular piece and slowly it ended up as a book. — Catherine Jones