Humor Writing Craft Quotes & Sayings

The best way to find out things, if you come to think of it, is not to ask questions at all. If you fire off a question, it is like firing off a gun; bang it goes, and everything takes flight and runs for shelter. But if you sit quite still and pretend not to be looking, all the little facts will come and peck round your feet, situations will venture forth from thickets and intentions will creep out and sun themselves on a stone; and if you are very patient, you will see and understand a great deal more than a man with a gun. — Elspeth Huxley

Slaying dragons, melting witches, and banishing demons is all fun and games until someone loses a sidekick - then it's personal. The bad guy isn't just the "bad guy" anymore, he's the BAD GUY! — Michael J. Sullivan

Yorkie has officially retired about 5 times ... The man's a clown ... People are going on about the game and agents and directors of football and managers losing their jobs, but we should be worried about people like him ... Clowns. That's the last time I'm going to say clown ... If he's the vice-president of FIFA, God help us all. — Roy Keane

Any asshole that has you, and is stupid enough to lose you, is a fucking idiot, Amanda. Trust me. I would know. — Jay McLean

In A Man With a Pipe, my brother observed that although my father had been seen as intellectual and my mother more a creature of temperament, she had often been the more levelheaded of the two. In sum, we miss them as we love them, equally and always. — Madeleine K. Albright

I admire the person who can write it right off. Mencken once said that a person who thinks clearly can write well. But I don't think clearly
too many thoughts bump into one another. Trains of thought run on a track of the Central Nervous System
the New York Central Nervous System, to make it worse. — James Thurber

Poetic license is not a license to scribe recklessly. — C. Kennedy

Don't sneak up on a woman holding a hammer. — Carolyn Brown

There is much still to talk about," Gregor cut in and Lucien's eyes went to him.
"We'll arrange another meeting. Two weeks," he stated.
Gregor's eyebrows shot up. "Two weeks?"
"Gregor, I'm about to walk out of this office, go home and ask the woman I love to spend eternity with me. Yes, fucking two weeks and consider yourself lucky I'm not going to arrange a fucking meeting until after two months. — Kristen Ashley

How many great gems were lost to thought
and not put down to pen.
You can but think of just a few
and then they're lost again. — L.F.Young

Show me you care about our common tongue. Bring to your [writing] passion, deeply informed by knowledge of your subject. Stay me, not with apples and flagons, but with wit and grace, humor and intense caring about your discipline. Don't slack, don't give it a lick and a promise, don't make it evident that you posted what was 'good enough for government work,' don't try and fake it. Give it your best, your all, not for pence, but for the love of the craft.
Do these things, as these writers and scores I have not named do, bring to your work your self, your heart, your voice, motherly or youthful, lawyerly or priestly, conservative or liberal, it matters not. Do this and I and hundreds of others will return again and again to your work, not merely because we may have a burning need for a new printer or an abiding interest in college newspapers or what have you, but because we wish to spend time with your mind and voice. — Markham Shaw Pyle

It has taken me a very long time, a very long time to give myself permission to fly and breathe fire. — Siri Hustvedt

By Cunning & Craft is a masterpiece of writing about writing. If, like Scheherazade, you had to spin out a story under threat of death, this is the how-to book to read. It's filled with thoughtful, nuanced advice from a teacher/writer who actually writes, and writes beautifully and with great humor. The list of rejected stories is worth the price of the whole book. — Nora Gallagher

On the whole, I think you should write biographies of those you admire and respect, and novels about human beings who you think are sadly mistaken. — Penelope Fitzgerald

Am dining at Goldini's Restaurant, Gloucester Road, Kensington. Please come at once and join me there. Bring with you a jemmy, a dark lantern, a chisel, and a revolver. S. H. It was a nice equipment for a respectable citizen to carry through the dim, fog-draped streets. — Arthur Conan Doyle

How hard can writing be? After all, most of the words are going to be 'and,' 'the,' and 'I,' and 'it,' and so on, and there's a huge number to choose from, so a lot of the work has been done for you. — Terry Pratchett

May I ask Master a question?"
"What is it you want to know, girl?"
"Does Master love his girl?"
He moved her into the railing, the intricate cast iron of the boundary around the balcony bit into her ass. Anyone walking by and looking up would see her naked. She knew that and he knew that.
"What does she think?" He parted her legs and stood between her open thighs. Her wrists still imprisoned in his hand hung over the barrier.
"Yes?"
"Every day for the last eight years I've worn her chain around my neck. A habit I couldn't break, a ritual like clockwork every morning. Her chain around my neck, my watch on my wrist. — April Vine

It's been my experience that most writers don't talk about their craft
they just do it — Alfred Lansing

I don't know if you have had the same experience, but the snag I always come up against when I'm telling a story is this dashed difficult problem of where to begin it. — P.G. Wodehouse

Writing is easy. You only need to stare at a blank piece of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. — Gene Fowler

What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There's no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told-and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion. Next question. — Michael Crichton

She developed a kind of disdain for her only sibling usually reserved for despotic political regimes and perpetrators of genocide. — Elisa Albert

We'll fight back, we'll fight back, we'll fight back, a man near Doctor Stockstill was chanting. Stockstill looked at him in astonishment, wondering who he would fight back against. Things were falling on them; did the man intend to fall back upward into the sky in some sort of revenge? — Philip K. Dick

If there's a camera on me or off me, it's roughly the same, just a lot less energy. — Ronda Rousey