Punch Line Quotes & Sayings

I'm not much for setup ... punch line. I talk about my kids. I talk about my wife. — Al Madrigal

I've spent my fortune, tarnished my public view and made myself the brunt of punch line after punch line. — Mindy McCready

My mother is very funny. She is from a village; she has a typical village kind of humour. Often she says a lot of things she herself isn't aware is a punch line. — Kapil Sharma

String theorists have found special pairs of geometrical shapes for space that have completely different features when each is probed by unwrapped strings. They also have completely different features when each is probed by wrapped strings. But-and this is the punch line-when probed both ways, with wrapped and unwrapped strings, the shapes become indistinguishable. what the unwrapped strings see on one space, the wrapped strings see on the other, and vice versa, rendering identical the collective picture gleaned from the full physics of string theory. — Brian Greene

I know because when I offered to help you move in you looked at me like you were just waiting for the punch line to a joke I wasn't telling. And that's what bullies do to people. They don't just hurt you or make you feel bad for five minutes in high school . They create the backbone of every friendship you try to have from then on. They change your life forever. — Charlotte Stein

My notion of a great novel is something like a five-hundred-page shaggy-dog story, with only the punch line omitted. — Edward Abbey

A cute girl, a pissed off Were-spider, and an occult boulnty hunter carrying a small arsenal walk into a bar ...
I bet this joke was gonna have one helluva punch line. — James R Tuck

Tucker doesn't see me right away. He smiles the way he does when he delivers the punch line for a joke, a wry, knowing little flash of teeth and dimple. I melt seeing that smile, remembering the times when it's been aimed at me. — Cynthia Hand

Dude, estoy aqui por loco, no por pendejo, which was the punch line to the funniest Spanish joke I knew. Okay, the only one. Google it. — Cory Doctorow

Mysteries are powerful, Cialdini says, because they create a need for closure. "You've heard of the famous Aha! experience, right?" he says. "Well, the Aha! experience is much more satisfying when it is preceded by the Huh? experience." By creating a mystery, the writer-astronomer made dust interesting. He sustained attention, not just for the span of a punch line but for the span of a twenty-page article dense with information on scientific theories and experimentation. — Chip Heath

Kevin [Drew] beat me to the punch because when he first sent "Sister OK" and I'm listening to it, it took me to a place that I had not been to in a long time. It took me to a place when you're a teenager. I understand it all now, but in a moment of confusion, in a moment of trying to find some kind of solid ground in an environment that was quicksand in my life, it's that first line just kills me all the time: "Well it's just that your sister said you'd be OK." — Andy Kim

I always told everybody the perfect joke would be where the setup and punch line were identical. — Norm MacDonald

We keep giggling, happy and nervous, tickled by an incomplete innocence. We both sense that some dark joke is being played on us, even if we can't quite grasp the punch line. — Karen Russell

If you have to do something, write me a funny AIDS play. Sure you can. It's the biggest joke played on us since sex itself - and with the longest punch line. — Robert Patrick

You know what you need?" Giguhl said. I raised a brow, bracing myself for a punch line. "A to-do list. Might help you keep track of all the beings who want you dead and the satanic birdlife you've kidnapped."
I imagined a list in my head:
1. Perform voodoo ritual on evil owl.
2. Find out who sold us out to the anachronistic Caste vampires.
3. Make amends with a lesbian werewolf.
4. Rescue twin.
5. Murder grandmother.
I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. "Yeah, I'll get right on that."
Gighul heard the sarcasm. "Suit yourself, but don't come crying to me if you forget who you're supposed to kill when. — Jaye Wells

How do you know you told a good punch line, a good joke? It's because they laugh. How do you know you've got a good scary punch line? It's because they jump out of the seat or scream. So the best reward is one you can listen to. — Katie Holmes

With her back turned, she loosened each plait until her hair hung in waves that curled around her waist. Then she spun to face him and puffed a sigh.
"Fine. You caught me. I guess there's no use pretending anymore."
Doran settled in and waited for the punch line.
"I lured you onto this ship," she said, "because I couldn't get enough of your scintillating personality."
There it was.
"Kiss me, Doran," she cried, flopping onto the mattress with one arm slung over her eyes and the other clutched to her breast. "I burn for you, hotter than a thousand hells."
He cocked his head to the side. "I think there's an ointment for that. — Melissa Landers

On stage you look much larger than you are. You can have subtle changes of timing; how you place a punch line in a joke or movement or emotion according to an audience. — Sylvester McCoy

It was almost funny. Life seemed downright accidental in its brevity, and death a punch line to a lousy joke. — Maureen Johnson

punch line: The most basic way to make people care is to form an association between something they don't yet care about and something they do care about. — Chip Heath

Be prepared to cut your little extra lines that come after a big punchline and move on to the next joke or routine to give your set more punch and crispness. You can keep them in your set, but if the audience applauds your big line, don't do your tag when it dies down, just move on. — Franklyn Ajaye

Confidence don't mean jack shit in the real world, sis," she once said. I feel myself finding the courage to trust those words more and more with every twist of the knife. Coincidentally, last Tuesday afternoon I was involuntarily exposed to the punch line of an old wise tale that goes something like: "There's beauty that can be found in everything." But why can't the insensitive cunt who said that ever find the courage to look in the mirror? Because poopycock, one might say. — Dave Matthes

We stare at each other pop-eyed over the burlap sack and laugh as if we're afraid to stop. Somebody needs to say the magical, abracadabrical words that will turn tonight's crime into a joke. Marta has buttoned her wet sweater up to her neck. Petey's vanished. Now Raffy swirls the flashlights with true panic. Our joke keeps hatching and waddling forward in a snaky black procession, growing longer and less funny by the second, and this time nobody, not even Raffy, knows the punch line. — Karen Russell

What if there were no punch lines? What if there were no indicators? What if I created tension and never released it? What if I headed for a climax, but all I delivered was an anticlimax? What would the audience do with all that tension? Theoretically, it would have to come out sometime. But if I kept denying them the formality of a punch line, the audience would eventually pick their own place to laugh, essentially out of desperation. This type of laugh seemed stronger to me, as they would be laughing at something they chose, rather than being told exactly when to laugh. — Steve Martin

We say no to lots of things that would please us. I would like to punch people every now and then, but I don't. I would like to have something for free rather than pay for it. I would like to skip to the front of the line ... I don't mean to brush aside the taste of meat, which is a powerful attraction. But its power is not without limit. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Never place your punch at the beginning of a column nor at the end. Sneak it in where it's least expected. Fill a whole column with drivel, just to get in that one important line. — Ayn Rand

Because you're looking for something temporary. Something fun to play with." I leaned even closer to deliver my punch line - the one that would deter even the horniest of men. "And I get attached." I stood back up to my full height so I could take in his reaction. "Now doesn't that just scare you shitless? — Laurelin Paige

A guy walks into a wedding reception. He goes up to the bartender and asks, "Is this the punch line? — Various

Or maybe it was just that my life was a big, cruel joke, and there was no escape from the punch line. — Stephenie Meyer

Weizenbaum did not acknowledge the beauty of the hacker devotion itself ... orthe very idealism of the Hacker Ethic. He had not seen, as Ed Fredkin had, Stew Nelson composing code on the TECO editor while Greenblatt and Gosper watched: without any of the three saying a word, Nelson was entertaining the others, encoding assembly-language tricks which to them, with their absolute mastery of that PDP-6 "language," had the same effect as hilariously incisive jokes. And after every few instructions there would be another punch line in this sublime form of communication ... The scene was a demonstration of sharing which Fredkin never forgot. — Anonymous

When a Dragon, an Elf, and a Human walk into a bar, the Human is always going to be the punch line. — Bryan Fields

My greatest fear is that the audience will beat me to the punch line. — David Mamet

The situation was so ridiculously bad it could have been the punch line of a joke, and if I hadn't been the one getting punched, I probably would have laughed myself sick. — Rachel Bach

When I'm writing columns, it's - all I'm thinking about is jokes, joke, joke, joke, setup, punch line, joke, joke, joke. And I really don't care where it goes. — Dave Barry

Never go for the punch line. There might be something funnier on the way. — Jerry Stiller

The punch line is 'knock the morale of an employee and organizational productivity is punctured'. — Henrietta Newton Martin

When a kid can understand that a word can mean two things, there's some real thinking going on. They have a vested interest in finding out what a word means, because it's the punch line to a joke. — Brian P. Cleary

Maybe I was what Leah thought she was. Some kind of dead end that shouldn't be passed on to another generation. Or maybe it was just that my life was a big, cruel joke, and there was no escape from the punch line. -Jacob — Stephenie Meyer

Too many comics today ramble. By the time they get to the punch line, the audience has either gone to sleep, gone to the bathroom or gone to bed. — Phyllis Diller

These days every morning begins like a joke
you think you have heard before,
but there is no one telling it
whom you can stop.
One day it's about a cow who walks into a bar,
then about a man with a big nose on his honeymoon,
then about a kangaroo who walks into a bar.
Each one takes up an entire day.
The sun looks like a prank Nathanael West
is pulling on the world; on the drive to work
cars are swinging comically from lane to lane.
The houses and lawns belong in cartoons.
The hours collapse into one another's arms.
The stories arc over noon and descend
like slow ferris wheels into the haze of evening.
You wish you could stop listening and get serious.
Trouble is you cannot remember the punch line
which never arrives till very late at night,
just as you are reaching for the bedside lamp,
just before you begin laughing in the dark. — Billy Collins

It was all very strange, Mr. Gray thought, as he wiped the coffee canister clean with a sponge. Very, very mysterious. You were born; you lived a whole life; and at the end, you wound up in a coffee canister.
"Ah, well," he said out loud quietly. "That's just the way things are. Life's a funny business." Death, he supposed, was the punch line. — Lauren Oliver

FRECK: (Casually) I bought a methedrine plant today. BARRIS: (With a snotty expression on his face) Methedrine is a benny, like speed; it's crank, it's crystal, it's amphetamine, it's made synthetically in a lab. So it isn't organic, like pot. There's no such thing as a methedrine plant like there is a pot plant. FRECK: (Springing the punch line on him) I mean I inherited forty thousand from an uncle and purchased a plant hidden in this dude's garage where he makes methedrine. I mean, he's got a factory there where he manufactures meth. — Philip K. Dick

What did the fish say when it hit a concrete wall?" he asks me. We're sitting on the bank of a stream and he's tying a fly onto my fishing rod, wearing a cowboy hat and a red lumberjack-style flannel shirt over a gray tee. So adorable.
"What?" I say, wanting to laugh and he hasn't even told me the punch line.
He grins. Unbelievable how gorgeous he is. And that he's mine. He loves me and I love him and how rare and beautiful is that?
"Dam!" he says. — Cynthia Hand

But you have to understand, mental illness is like cholesterol. There is is good kind and the bad. Without the good kind- less flavor to life. Van Gogh, Beethoven, Edgar Allen Poe, Sylvia Plath, Pink Floyd (the early Piper at the Gates of Dawn line up), scientific breakthroughs, spiritual revolution, utopian visions, zany nationalism that kills millions- wait, that's the bad kind. Tim Dorsey (Hurricane Punch) — Tim Dorsey

Arturo as their permanent governor. An uncontested leader who hated them as much as they hated him. One who would take the same amount of pity on them as they'd shown Darling and his sister. None whatsoever. May the gods help them now that he wouldn't be there to protect them from Arturo's wrath. Yeah, fate was a bitch, but she always had a wicked sense of humor. Today, he was her punch line. Tomorrow, she'd be laughing at them. Darling's thoughts turned to Zarya. He wanted to believe she had nothing to do with this. That she'd never sanction such cruelty from her men. But he knew better. Clarion — Sherrilyn Kenyon

The blond man beside him was about the same height and equally stunning, but less intimidating. The good-humored expression on his face set him apart from the other man. He looked as though he was recalling the punch line to a good joke. The men walked through the waiting area and stood near the large windows, away from the crowd. — S.L. Morgan

I can be really silly when I'm not actually writing silliness, and I have to rein that in. Pynchon, in my opinion, sometimes tells elaborate shaggy dog stories just to work up to a pun or punch line. My challenge is to use humor and wordplay to reinforce the emotional core of the novel. — Mary Kay Zuravleff

My works were not - and they still aren't - single panel gags with a punch line underneath them. I like a lot of those cartoons; I just don't draw them. — Roz Chast

Life is a cruel, horrible joke and I am the punch line. — Carrie Fisher

I can still run in a straight line, and I can still throw a punch. — Pierce Brosnan

One must remember that in the '70s, Democrats still grasping for Camelot were desperately pinning their hopes on Teddy while Republicans were doing everything they could politically to turn him into a punch line post-Chappaquiddick. And the idea of Ted Kennedy - rather than the actual man - dominated his political legacy through the early '90s. — Chuck Todd

If you have the right voice and the right delivery, you're cocky enough, and you pound down on the punch line, you can say anything and make people laugh maybe three times before they realize you're not telling jokes. — Buddy Hackett

I got into stand-up because I love stand-up. Specifically in stand-up, I love jokes. I love short, structured ideas and a punch line. — Demetri Martin

This is thought to be Jesus's best-loved parable, usually because our eyes are on the prodigal and his father. But as with jokes, so with parables: there is a principle in both of "end stress." The "punch line" comes at the end. That being the case the alarming message here is that the spirit of the elder brother, the legalist, is more likely to be found near the father's house than in the pig farm - or in concrete terms, in the congregation and among the faithful. And sometimes (only sometimes?), it appears in the pulpit and in the heart of the pastor. — Sinclair B. Ferguson

The fine line between genius and madness is a punch line. Duck, you idiot! — Brian Spellman

Adam's lips are set in a grime line. I can't tell if he's about to cry or about to punch the guard. For his sake, I hope it's the former. For you own, I hope the latter. — Gayle Forman

History is like a long, twisted joke. You never know when the punch line will come. — Laksmi Pamuntjak

The late Curt Cobain captured the attitude of today's culture with the line, "Here we are; now entertain us." I believe that, unfortunately, many Christians have made Cobain's line the refrain of their friendships.
In my opinion, our cultural obsession with entertainment is really just an expression of selfishness. The focus in entertainment is not producing something useful for the benefit of others but consuming something for the pleasure of self. And a friendship based on this self-serving, pleasure-seeking mind-set can easily slip into a similarly self-serving romantic relationship that meets the needs of the moment.
But when we shift our relationship orientation from entertainment to service, our friendships move from a focus on ourselves to a focus on the people we can serve. And here's the punch line: In service we find true friendship. In service we can know our friends in a deeper way than ever before. — Joshua Harris

I like to smoke a pipe, because it's the punch line indicator. Whenever I take a hit of the pipe, you should be laughing. — Mitch Hedberg

In the end, perhaps we should simply imagine a joke; a long joke that's continually retold in an accent too thick and strange to ever be completely understood. Life is that joke my friends. The soul is the punch line. — Tom Robbins

A final dirty joke.
Another human punch line.
As with many of the others, when I began my journey away, there seemed a quick shadow again, a final moment of eclipse - the recognition of another soul gone.
You see, to me, for just a moment, despite all of the colors that touch and grapple with what I see in this world, I will often catch an eclipse when a human dies.
I've seen millions of them.
I've seen more eclipses than I care to remember

" The Book Thief — Markus Zusak

There's only one of him, she thought, and he's right here.
He knows I'll like a song before I've heard it. He laughs before I even get to the punch line. There's a place on his chest, just below his throat, that makes me want to let him open doors for me.
There's only one of him. — Rainbow Rowell

Fate was a bitch, but she always had a wicked sense of humor. Today, he was her punch line. Tomorrow, she'd be laughing at them.
-Darling's thoughts — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I had a dream about you. You were crying, and I couldn't tell if it was because you were sad or because you'd been laughing too hard. So I decided to find out by telling you that I'd just heard from the cops, and your mother had been murdered. Before I got to the punch line you started sobbing in a different manner, so I realized you'd been laughing earlier. By that time the mood had changed, and I decided it best not to deliver the punch line after all. So I sat down next to you and put my arm around you and tried to console you for your perceived loss. — Dora J. Arod

My father who in this case was an obsessive life-long storyteller, and by a very peculiar trick of my father's. My father would tell a very, very long story, and the punch line would be in Yiddish. — Stephen Greenblatt

You know that old joke about the guy who lives to be 104? The punch line goes something like 'If I knew I was gonna get this old, I'd have taken much better care of myself.' Well, guess what? We actually are living longer, and the time to start taking care of ourselves is right this minute. — Oprah Winfrey

If a faerie, a vampire, and a demon walk into a bar, you wait for the punch line. At Private Eye, when a faerie, a vampire, and a demon walk through the door, it's just another day at the office. — E.J. Stevens

That's no little kid. That's Jason Steed, the biggest damn hero you will ever see! — Mark A. Cooper

So I'd much rather get across the concept of freedom. It's what's important to Indian children. The only way you can be free is to know is that you are worthwhile as a distinct human being. Otherwise you become what the colonizers have designed, and that is a lemming. Get in line, punch all the right keys, and die. — Russell Means

Whenever I stumble over my own feet, or blurt out a thought that makes no sense at all, or leave the house wearing one pattern too many, I always think, It's okay, I'm from New Jersey. I love New Jersey, because it's not just an all-purpose punch line, but probably a handy legal defense, as in, Yes, I shot my wife because I thought she was Bigfoot, but I'm from New Jersey. — Paul Rudnick

My grandpa was an amateur stand-up comic when I was growing up ... He'd have me come up onstage with him to deliver a punch line: 'Why is your nose in the middle of your face?' 'Because it's the scenter.' — Rachel Bloom

A witch, a vampire, and a pixy walk into a bar, I thought as I led the way into the Squirrel's End. It was early, and the sun had yet to set when the door swung shut behind Jenks, sealing us in the warm air smelling faintly of smoke. Immediately Nick yanked it open to come in behind us. And there's the punch line. — Kim Harrison

The real challenge in acting is in comedy. It's easier to get that gasp in a drama. Not easy, because you still have to find that emotional pitch. And when you do something in drama and you hear that sob from the audience it's so fulfilling. But as a comic actor, when the laugh is supposed to come and you punch in that line and nothing happens it is dreadful. It's horrific and you feel like dying right there. — George Takei

Cigarettes are an instant signifier in culture. It punctuates a joke, or puts that extra zing on a punch line. I like them as a prop. I think it can be really useful for character and texture and contrast and all of that. — Martha Plimpton

Ew. Someone put the dog out, "Rosalie murmured wrinkling her nose.
Have you herd this one, Psycho?
how do a blond's brain cells die?"
She didn't say anything.
Well?" I asked."Do you know the punch line or not?"
She looked pointedly at the TV and ignored me.
Has she heard it?" I asked Edward.
No." He answered.
Awesome. So you'll enjoy this, bloodsucker
a blond's brain cells die alone. — Stephenie Meyer

When you take a pause before delivering your punch line, you will be using silence as a creative entity in itself. — Franklyn Ajaye

Sometimes I get so lost in the moment, I start running around my yard, flapping my arms like a seagull at the beach. A lot of times I'll even start to squawk. Usually right around the third or fourth squawk is when my neighbor starts screaming at me to pipe down. He's always like, "Quiet down, lady! And put on some pants!" And I'm always like, "YOU put on some pants, sir!" because in the heat of the moment I panic and I can't think of anything better to say. Of course, he's already wearing pants, so it doesn't pack quite the punch I want it to, but the bottom line is he's clearly not as connected to nature as I am. — Ellen DeGeneres

You always felt they were pawns in an indifferent universe, butts of an existential joke with no punch line. — Poppy Z. Brite

Some movies run off the rails. This one is like the train crash in The Fugitive. I watched it in mounting gloom, realizing I was witnessing something historic, a film that for decades to come will be the punch line of jokes about bad movies. — Roger Ebert

An attempt at visualizing the Fourth Dimension: Take a point, stretch it into a line, curl it into a circle, twist it into a sphere, and punch through the sphere. — Albert Einstein

I realized that comedians of the day were operating on jokes and punch lines. The moment you say the punch line, the audience either laughs sincerely or they laugh automatically or they don't laugh. The thing that bothered me was that automatic laugh. I said, that's not real laughter. — Steve Martin

You've got to face facts and the fact is life is a joke, a fucking bad joke, or, no, a bad fucking joke. There's no point taking it seriously because whatever happens, and I mean whatever the fuck, the punch line is the same: you go out horizontally. You see the point? No fucking point. — Jeet Thayil

When I'm directing actors, I often find myself slipping in sports metaphors, like: 'Don't go for the punch line here, just put it up on a T-ball stand so she can hit it out of the park.' — Mark Waters

It's the surprise, the unexpected, the out of control. It turns out that laughter is the only free emotion
the only one that can't be compelled. We can be made to fear. We can even be made to believe that we're in love because, if we're kept dependent and isolated for long enough, we bond in order to survive. But laughter explodes like aha! It comes when the punch line changes everything that has gone before, when two opposites collide and make a third, when we suddenly see a new reality. Einstein said he had to be very careful while shaving, because when he had an idea he laughed
and he cut himself. Laughter is an orgasm of the mind. — Gloria Steinem

The thing I was beginning to figure out about Sam and Grace, the thing about Sam not being able to function without her, was that that sort of love only worked when you were sure both people would always be around for each other. If one half of the equation left, or died, or was slightly less perfect in their love, it became the most tragic, pathetic story invented, laughable in its absurdity. Without Grace, Sam was a joke without a punch line. — Maggie Stiefvater

I don't really know what is shocking. When you tell the story of a man who is beheaded, you have to show how they cut off his head. If you don't, it's like telling a dirty joke and leaving out the punch line. — Roman Polanski

Imagine that someone came up with a brilliant new campaign against smoking. It would show graphic images of people dying of lung cancer followed by the punch line: 'It's easy to be healthy - smoke one less cigarette a month.' We know without a moment's reflection that this campaign would fail," wrote British climate activist and author George Marshall. "The target is so ludicrous, and the disconnection between the images and the message is so great, that most smokers would just laugh it off. — Naomi Klein

[ ... ] Depressive Episodes.
[I]Episodes.[/i] Like depression is a sitcom with a fun punch line each time. Or a TV box set loaded with cliffhangers. The only cliffhanger in my life is "Will I ever get rid of this s***?" And believe me, it gets pretty monotonous. — Sophie Kinsella

It always seems to someone outside the business that it is very difficult to write for a comedy show because it must be done quickly. Actually, it is much easier to write this humor than to do a joke or a show from scratch, because the audience knows the plot. Just mention what is going on and then deliver the punch line. — Robert Orben

How's this for a punch line," she whispered, wetting her lips as her gaze fell to my mouth. The action made me forget to breathe. "Marry me today, and I'll stay the night again tonight, only this time instead of asking you to stop, I'll beg you not to. — Kelly Oram

I don't think there's a punch-line scheduled, is there? — Vince Lombardi

The movies that I love and model after, like 'Annie Hall,' 'When Harry Met Sally,' and in particular for me, 'Broadcast News,' are the tone of life, which isn't a setup punch-line every two minutes. — Jason Segel

There are times when you've personally known things to misfire
the sentence that fell badly, the dull gift, slapdash comment, hobbled punch line, tight-fisted tip
trying to be too stupid, trying to be too clever, too silly, too carefree, too caring, too free. You can think back to those long and hollow pauses when you realised that you'd misjudged a mood, weren't paying attention, had taken the wrong risk. — A. L. Kennedy

I finally understood why laughter is a mark of wanderers, from the holy fools of Old Russia to the roadies of rock music. It's the surprise, the unexpected, the out of control. It turns out that laughter is the only free emotion - the only one that can't be compelled. We can be made to fear. We can even be made to believe we're in love because, if we're kept dependent and isolated for long enough, we bond in order to survive. But laughter explodes like an aha! It comes when the punch line changes everything that has gone before, when two opposites collide and make a third, when we suddenly see a new reality. — Gloria Steinem

Shame about how we're gonna die here, though. I mean, seriously. An Arab
and a half-Jew enter a store in Tennessee. It's the beginning of a joke, and the punch line is sodomy'. — John Green

Ronan and Gansey were laughing, he thought, at a joke where the rest of the world was the punch line. — Maggie Stiefvater

If they were the jokes, I was the punch line. — Kimberly Novosel

I went to the doctor," said the woman next to Ethel. "I said to him, 'I've got an itchy twat.'"
[ ... ]
She went on: "The doctor says to me, he goes, 'You shouldn't say that, it's a rude word.'"
[ ... ]
"I says to him, 'What should I say, then, doctor?' He says to me, 'Say you've got an itchy finger.'"
[ ... ]
"He says to me, 'Do your finger itch you all the time, Mrs. Perkins, or just now and again?'"
Mildred paused, and the women were silent, waiting for the punch line.
"I says, 'No, doctor, only when I piss through it. — Ken Follett

Typically, when you're with your friends, premises are coming up left and right. But when you're on stage, you must create the premise. So you have to create the premise, paint the picture and then deliver the punch line. — Jon Stewart