Quotes & Sayings About Parody

Or the Department of Education and another ministry were worried about duplication of effort, so what did they do? They set up two committees to look into duplication and neither knew what the other was up to. It really is a world beyond parody. — Rory Bremner

I started to get nervous when people began posting, on the public newsgroups, plot suggestions for future books and speculation about how characters would develop. The Net is still new, and it is big and it is public, and has brought with it new perceptions and problems. (One minor one is that people are out driving their language on a worldwide highway without passing a test. Take the word plagiarize. I know what it means. You know what it means. Lawyers certainly know what it means. But I have seen it repeatedly used as a synonym for research, parody, and reference, as — Anonymous

Oh, I don't mean to infer that you're not a great guy. I'm sure you're the exception to the rule. — Jaye Frances

Actually, the Sniper's sense of humor frightened Amy more than anything else. The parody of Carla's poem had been witty, the rudeness of Marvy's critique outlandish, and she was still, for some reason, focused on that "youse" in the Sniper's counterfeit email. "Youse" was like a spectral elbow to Amy's ribs. Dangerous, malevolent people should not be amusing. In order to be humorous, you had to have perspective, to be able to stand outside yourself and your own needs and grudges and fears and see yourself for the puny ludicrous creature you really are. How could somebody do that and still imagine himself entitled to harry, to wound, to kill? — Jincy Willett

Here, and it goes on to appear now, she comes, a peacefugle, a parody's bird, a peri potmother, a pringlpik in the ilandiskippy, with peewee and powwows in beggybaggy on her bickybacky and a flick flask fleckflinging its pixylighting pacts' huemeramybows, picking here, pecking there, pussypussy plunderpussy. — James Joyce

Thanksgiving dinner with my family is awesome," I deadpanned. "Now drink your gold before somebody comes along and mutates you into a twisted parody of humanity. — Seanan McGuire

Extremely self-conscious in its craft, in many ways The Hand of Ethelberta is an exploration of fiction as illusion, which involves parody of the conventions it employs; romance, melodrama and farce, and a rejection of realism for absurdist and surrealistic effects. The 'hand' of Ethelberta is an obvious, ironic allusion to courtship, and the sub-title, 'A Comedy in Chapters', suggests the novel's affinity with the conventions of Restoration and eighteenth-century comedy of manners. — Geoffrey Harvey

Old age is life's parody. — Simone De Beauvoir

Wanted: Steel toed Bible thumpers to reach a monster truck mad world. — M.J. McGuire

All families are silly in their own way. — Alan Hollinghurst

Abortion is the Antichrist's demonic parody of the eucharist. That's why it uses the same holy words, "This is my body," with the blasphemous opposite meaning. — Peter Kreeft

Hey," said Shadow. "Huginn or Muninn, or whoever you are."
The bird turned, head tipped, suspiciously, on one side, and it stared at him with bright eyes.
"Say 'Nevermore,'" said Shadow.
"Fuck you," said the raven. — Neil Gaiman

Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake it for the genuine article. — Nathan Poe

I see parody as another form of comedy. — Bruce Campbell

Love is private and primitive and a bit on the funky and frightening side. I think of the Luna card in the Tarot deck: some strange, huge crustacean, its armor glistening and its pinchers wiggling, clatters out of a pool while wild dogs howl at a bulging moon. Underneath the hearts and flowers, love is loony like that. Attempts to housebreak it, to refine it, to dress the crabs up like doves and make them sing soprano always result in thin blood. You end up with a parody. — Tom Robbins

The parody is the last refuge of the frustrated writer. Parodies are what you write when you are associate editor of the Harvard Lampoon. The greater the work of literature, the easier the parody. The step up from writing parodies is writing on the wall above the urinal. — Ernest Hemingway,

Living in Venice, it's hard to determine the real parody of inhumanity. On the one hand, there are the homeless hordes, a teaming mass of virtual zombies swelling the streets whose daily business amounts to ruffling through trash, pissing on corners and chasing pets. On the other hand, there is the endless stream of bourgeois stiffs coming and going from home, restaurants and shops. They are zombies in their own right who pretend the homeless don't exist. — Ryan Hyatt

If you do a Western that's funny, there's no way people don't call it a spoof or a parody, even though it may not be. — Adam McKay

this integration of Jefferson and Jesus is in many ways how members of the evangelical right can oppose abortion yet ignore the needs of disenfranchised members of society, how they can rage against sexual revolutions and offer little critique on economic greed or mass consumption, and how they can keep labor unions and government in check while not doing the same to Wall Street, insurance companies, and other big American businesses. Of course, much of today's evangelical political doctrine has become so radical, so driven by fear and hyperbole that it's more or less a parody of the doctrines of Thomas Jefferson and Jesus, a culture where the poor in spirit are not blessed, they are marginalized and expected to care for themselves. — Matthew Paul Turner

With parody, you're referencing and sending up a particular genre, and mostly your material is going to be taken out of that genre. — Marlon Wayans

When you're a trans woman, you are made to walk this very fine line, where if you act feminine you are accused of being a parody, but if you act masculine, it is seen as a sign of your true male identity. And if you act sweet and demure, you're accused of reinforcing patriarchal ideals of female passivity, but if you stand up for your own rights and make your voice heard, then you are dismissed as wielding male privilege and entitlement. — Julia Serano

My own personal tastes don't really have an effect on whether song is a parody target or not. But having said that, I try to pick songs that I actually like because I realize that I have to live with these songs for a long time, from when I'm working on them in the studio to possibly playing them onstage for the rest of my life. So I try not to pick songs that I know would drive me crazy. — Al Yankovic

I think there's something in common with the OSS 117 movies. The big difference is there's no irony in this one. It's not parody. I tried to make it very simple. It's a simple story, but to be simple, it's very complex in the way it's done. — Michel Hazanavicius

I'm a music fan, and I can listen to the radio, or music, without thinking, "How am I going to screw this up?" [Laughs] If I'm really actively trying to think of a parody, then I'll have my antenna out, and be a little more proactive about it. — Al Yankovic

We (people) only remembered that elves sang. But we forgot what they sang about. — Terry Pratchett

My first big gig was as a correspondent on Comedy Central's 'The Daily Show.' My job was to parody TV reporters and political pundits. As a result, I was often invited onto cable news shows as comic relief. — Beth Littleford

Born to an age where horror has become commonplace, where tragedy has, by its monotonous repetition, become a parody of sorrow, we need to fence off a few parks where humans try to be fair, where skill has some hope of reward, where absurdity has a harder time than usual getting a ticket. — Thomas Boswell

I just think that the world of workshops - I've written a poem that is a parody of workshop talk, I've written a poem that is a kind of parody of a garrulous poet at a poetry reading who spends an inordinate amount of time explaining the poem before reading it, I've written a number of satirical poems about other poets. — Billy Collins

It is, after all, far too easy to pinch and kick the bizarre Mormon Church; to say it's ripe for satire and parody is to say a Catholic schoolgirl is ripe for debauchery. It's like shooting polygamist fish in a barrel of coffee. — Mark Morford

When I was being moved, a deputy U.S. Marshal with a Southern accent so thick it sounded like he was doing a bad parody of a Good Ol' Boy sheriff laughed and said, "You're the only prisoner we ever had that got booted out of jail! — Kevin D. Mitnick

For such is the fate of parody: it must never fear exaggerating. If it strikes home, it will only prefigure something that others will then do without a smile
and without a blush
in steadfast virile seriousness. — Umberto Eco

Heaven wouldn't be like this earth, this tormented earth ruled by evil forces that tossed humanity to and fro like a slow clown in a two-bit rodeo. — Joe LaFlam

I had a dejected, brooding expression on my face, and I
could tell from the reflection in the window that it was also
an intriguing expression. — The Harvard Lampoon

I parody myself every chance I get. I try to make fun of myself and let people know that I'm a human being, and these things that have happened to me are real. I'm not just some cartoon who exists and suddenly doesn't exist. — Gary Coleman

Captain Smek himself appeared on television for an official speech to humankind.
[ ... ] 'Noble Savages of Earth,' he said. 'Long time we have tried to live together in peace.' (It had been five months.) 'Long time have the Boov suffered under the hostileness and intolerableness of you people. With sad hearts I now concede that Boov and humans will never to exist as one.'
I remember being really excited at this point. Could I possibly be hearing right? Were the Boov about to leave? I was so stupid.
'And so now I generously grant you Human Preserves - gifts of land that will be for humans forever, never to be taken away again, now.'
[ ... ] So that's when we Americans were given Florida. One state for three hundred million people. There were going to be some serious lines for the bathrooms. — Adam Rex

Today I realize that many recent exercises in "deconstructive reading" read as if inspired by my parody. This is parody's mission: it must never be afraid of going too far. If its aim is true, it simply heralds what others will later produce, unblushing, with impassive and assertive gravity. — Umberto Eco

The funny thing is that the process of coming up with an idea for a column or a 'Candid Camera' sequence is essentially the same thing. I just live my life with eyes and ears perhaps a little bit wider open than some people. Whatever bothers me or seems off kilter or in need of parody-or on a serious subject, in need of examination-in the past I had done a sequence about it. Now I write a column about it. — Peter Funt

Suddenly I wanted to get better. Mania wasn't fun anymore. It wasn't creative or visionary. It was mean parody at best, a cheap chemical trick. I needed to stop and get better. I'd take whatever they gave me, I pledged silently. I'd take Trilafon or Thorazine or whatever. I just wanted to sleep. — David Lovelace

The Prime Minister seems now to be basing his re-election campaign on this plot line. He is saying to the Australian people, look out, the baddies behind you - hiss, boo and whatever you do, don't vote Labor. This political parody of pantomime is looking and sounding desperate. — Julia Gillard

I appreciate that the New York Daily News will show dead bodies but blur the cover of a French parody magazine. Just out of respect, right guys? — Jim Norton

May is a pious fraud of the almanac A ghastly parody of real Spring Shaped out of snow and breathed with eastern wind. — James Russell Lowell

His young man's limbs, sleek in their dark male pride, seemed to disdain the covering offered them by the brief shorts and striped jersey. His body might have been naked, like his full, muscled throat, which rose, round and proud as the male organ of a flower, from the neck of his sweater. — Stella Gibbons

Parody by itself is not subversive, and there must be a way to understand what makes certain kinds of parodic repetitions effectively disruptive, truly troubling, and which repetitions become domesticated and recirculated as instruments of cultural hegemony — Judith Butler

The boy Weneluke wove hand patterns with a string, working skillfully into abstract designs on all eight fingers: one of these represented a man and woman facing each other, and, by manipulating each sex, he arrived at a nice parody of copulation. — Peter Matthiessen

Any approach to scientific inference which seeks to legitimize it and answer in reponse to complex uncertainty is, for me, a totalitarian parody of a would-be rational learning process. — Adrian Smith

There was also the time that competitors were asked to submit a paragraph of a Graham Greene parody: Greene himself entered under a pseudonym and placed third. — Christopher Hitchens

Tolerance is a cheap, low-grade parody of love. Tolerance is not a great virtue to aspire to. Love is much tougher and harder. — N. T. Wright

I never consciously do any work directly influenced from any movie, unless I'm doing a parody. — Ted Rall

Innocence is the one thing you can't re-create, can only parody. — Andrew Smith

I'd like to say that parody is a celebration of a person's specific characteristics, as opposed to mockery. — Ana Gasteyer

The poet who sees himself as a hero or a prophet, or a priest of the socio-political forces to which he is loyal, which he believes are the historical necessities of his times, too easily becomes a puppet. He has no external measure with which to assess reality. Whether he submits to the forces or rejects them, he becomes a parody of himself, and then without knowing it submits his gifts to the demons of his era. He loses his place in the continuity of time. He becomes dependent on social affirmation and the drug of exalted feelings common to all revolutionaries. He destroys, even as he thinks he creates. — Michael D. O'Brien

The trouble with these Nazis is that they have no self-critical faculty, so in their efforts to achieve greatness, they achieve nothing but a parody of greatness. Caesar conquered nations, took their leaders captive, picked their brains, and so enriched his empire. Hitler will burn down nations, torture their leaders to death, and destroy the world. — Edith Hahn Beer

I'm actually incapable of lying. I'm like a parody of a person who can't lie. — Busy Philipps

If you stand at the window where I stood, if you read the books that I read, if we can be with each other even just like that ... then lets, count that as us being together. I'll miss you alot. I love you. I love you ... — T.O.P

Christians recognize that all social organizations exist as parodies of eschatological hope. And so it is that the city is a poor imitation of heavenly community;13 the modern state, a deformed version of the ecclesia;14 the market, a distortion of consummation; modern entertainment, a caricature of joy; schooling, a misrepresentation of true formation; liberalism, a crass simulacrum of freedom; and the sovereignty we accord to the self, a parody of God himself. As these institutions and ideals become ends in themselves, they become the objects of idolatry. The shalom of God - which is to say, the presence of God himself - is the antithesis to all such imitations. — James Davison Hunter

People are so sensitive about race that they can't hear someone speaking about their life in a very true way, or doing satire or political parody. — Margaret Cho

Parodies and caricatures are the most penetrating of criticisms. — Aldous Huxley

I'm happy for you Agastya,you're leaving for a more meaningful context. This place is like a parody, a complete farce, they're trying to build another Cambridge here. At my old University I used to teach Macbeth to my MA English classes in Hindi.English in India is burlesque. But now you'll get out of here to somehow a more real situation. In my time I'd wanted to give this Civil Service exam too, I should have. Now I spend my time writing papers for obscure journals on L. H. Myers and Wyndham Lewis, and teaching Conrad to a bunch of half-wits. — Upamanyu Chatterjee

A clever schoolboy's reaction to his reading is most naturally expressed by parody or imitation. — C.S. Lewis

It is hard for many people today to make the distinction between religion and religiosity, the latter a dangerous parody of the former. — Abigail McCarthy

He was there below me, and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a featherhat, walking on his hind legs. — Joseph Conrad

English and Gym. That's it. Look, do you know how difficult it is to write about being at school convincingly? It's been years since Stephfordy graduated, so it'll save us all a lot of time and effort if we just stick to two real subjects... — Stephfordy Mayo

Whenever I do a parody it's not meant to make you hate anybody's music really. — Al Yankovic

I think a lot of the time you just parody yourself. — Dylan Moran

You risk becoming a parody of yourself by not innovating. — Keith Olbermann

Cynical, self-deprecating, affected, indiscriminate, patronizing, immature, as sloppy intellectually as he was with his desk, fickle, vain, virile, brooding, pedantic, philandering...in short, Byronic, Byronic, Byronic, almost to the point of parody. — Laura Elizabeth Woollett

In the sense that Watchmen references movies, comic books, pop culture in general. It knows it's a movie. I really do like movies that ride that fine line, the razor's edge between parody and supporting the fake movie part of the movie. — Zack Snyder

Dizzy Gillespie recorded it with Charlie Parker in an
influential 1945 track (incorporating a much imitated intro - perhaps initially
intended as a parody of Rachmaninoff 's Prelude in C-Sharp Minor — Ted Gioia

To provide meaningful architecture is not to parody history but to articulate it. — Daniel Libeskind

The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world. In other words, I can only recommend perspective and distance. — Vaclav Havel

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. It was the future, and everything sucked. — Greg Nagan

Memories of the last nine years have turned Ground Zero from a site of horror, to a reminder of grief, to an occasion for ludicrous artistic posturing - and now to something very close to parody. — John Podhoretz

The age of simulation thus begins with a liquidation of all referentials - worse: by their artificial resurrection in systems of signs, a more ductile material than meaning ... It is no longer a question of imitation, nor of reduplication, nor even of parody. It is rather a question of substituting signs of the real for the real itself. — Jean Baudrillard

The people are so small, they look like ants (although they're Walmart customers, so they look like obese ants). — Andrew Shaffer

There are writers who do start doing the same thing again and again and almost inevitably fall into self-parody. — Tobias Wolff

There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning. — Simone De Beauvoir

Man was entering under false pretenses the sphere of incredible facilities, acquired too cheaply, below cost price, almost for nothing, and the disproportion between outlay and gain, the obvious fraud on nature, the excessive payment for a trick of genius, had to be offset by self-parody. — Bruno Schulz

And as we see from the parable of the farmer and his daughter who were travelling to Jericho in a wagon when they fell among thieves, and all was taken from them save some jewels that the daughter contrived to hide in her vagina. After the thieves had gone, she gave these jewels to her father, to raise his heart again. And her father said unto her: If only your mother was here. We could have saved the horse and the wagon also. — Robert Nye

You can parody almost anything. — Bruce McCall

It's hard to really articulate what the parameters are that make one song parody-able and another song not, but if I can come up with a good enough idea for it, I go for it, and if not, then I have to move on. — Al Yankovic

Is not parody the eternal lot of man? — Milan Kundera

The grand style is available now only in old poems, museums, and parodies. — Mason Cooley

There's a side that I want to do just like really retarded arty films like parody, pretentious art films that kind of are supposed to have some deep meaning. — Andy Milonakis

It's a sort of piss-take on culture, because a drag queen is a clown - a parody of our society. It's a sarcastic spoof on culture, which allows us to laugh at ourselves - but in a way that is inclusive of everyone. — RuPaul

My personal taste doesn't enter into it a lot when I make my decisions as to what to parody. — Al Yankovic

Satire is a lesson, parody is a game. — Vladimir Nabokov

In 1995, psychiatrist Ivan Goldberg coined the term internet addiction disorder. He wrote a satirical essay about "people abandoning their family obligations to sit gazing into their computer monitor as they surfed the Internet." Intending to parody society's obsession with pathologizing everyday behaviors, he inadvertently advanced the idea. Goldberg responded critically when academics began discussing internet addiction as a legitimate disorder: "I don't think Internet addiction disorder exists any more than tennis addictive disorder, bingo addictive disorder, and TV addictive disorder exist. People can overdo anything. To call it a disorder is an error. — Danah Boyd

By crossing into a space whose curvature is no longer that of the real, nor that of truth, the era of simulation is inaugurated by a liquidation of all referentials - worse: with their artificial resurrection in the systems of signs, a material more malleable than meaning, in that it lends itself to all systems of equivalences, to all binary oppositions, to all combinatory algebra. It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real, that is to say of an operation of deterring every real process via its operational double, a programmatic, metastable, perfectly descriptive machine that offers all the signs of the real and shortcircuits all its vicissitudes. — Jean Baudrillard

Mission motto, sir," said Carrot cheerfully. "Morituri Nolumus Mori. Rincewind suggested it."
"I imagine he did," said Lord Vetinari, observing the wizard coldly. "And would you care to give us a colloquial translation, Mr Rincewind?"
"Er ... " Rincewind hesitated, but there really was no escape. "Er ... roughly speaking, it means, 'We who are about to die don't want to', sir. — Terry Pratchett

The first piece of 'long' fiction I wrote was a novella parody of Stephen King's 'Christine.' I was in high school, and my version was about a kid with a possessed locker instead of a possessed car. It was also my first attempt at humour, which fell completely flat because no one who read it realized it was a parody! — Kelley Armstrong

By now the valley of the shadow of doubt was overrunneth with skepticism, so God became angry, so angry that God lost His temper and cursed the first humans, telling them to go forth and multiply themselves (but not in those words). But the humans took God literally and now there are six billion of them. — Michael Shermer

I didn't laugh, but it was a near thing. It's hard when someone is just exactly like a parody. — Jo Walton

If you aim for parody right off the bat and it misses, no offense to the filmmakers, but it is Meet the Spartans. — Adam McKay

A typical 'Larry King Live' is a pastiche whose absurdism defies parody. Wearing his trademark suspenders and purple shirts, he looks as if he's strapped to the chair with vertical seat belts, unable to eject. — James Wolcott

Literary theory has become a parody of science, generating its own arcane jargon. In the process, tragically, it discourages love of literature for its own sake. — Nancy Pearcey

There was a time when I quite liked what I saw in the looking-glass, but not anymore. Now I'm startled, and more than startled, by the visage that so abruptly appears there, never at all the one that I expect. I have been elbowed aside by a parody of myself, a sadly dishevelled figure in a Halloween mask made of sagging, pinkish- grey rubber that bears no more than a passing resemblance to the image of what I look like that I stubbornly retain in my head. — John Banville

I looked over at Edwart. It occurred to me that I had never seen him in direct sunlight. Interestingly enough, I had also never seen him sparkle. Could the two be related? — The Harvard Lampoon

If there is anything of which I am certain in life it is that I shall never exchange the liberty of my exile for the vile parody of home. — Vladimir Nabokov

It's far easier to write why something is terrible than why it's good. If you're reviewing a film and you decide "This is a movie I don't like," basically you can take every element of the film and find the obvious flaw, or argue that it seems ridiculous, or like a parody of itself, or that it's not as good as something similar that was done in a previous film. What's hard to do is describe why you like something. Because ultimately, the reason things move people is very amorphous. You can be cerebral about things you hate, but most of the things you like tend to be very emotive. — Chuck Klosterman

Tallish. Check. Built like a bull. Check. Were there tingles in her downstairs department? Mmhmm. Check. Her pearly gates had gone into override and the doors were ready to burst open. — Cari Silverwood