Punch Lines Quotes & Sayings

The Industrial Revolution was based on two grand concepts that were profound in their simplicity. Innovators came up with ways to simplify endeavors by breaking them into easy, small tasks that could be accomplished on assembly lines. Then, beginning in the textile industry, inventors found ways to mechanize steps so that they could be performed by machines, many of them powered by steam engines. Babbage, building on ideas from Pascal and Leibniz, tried to apply these two processes to the production of computations, creating a mechanical precursor to the modern computer. His most significant conceptual leap was that such machines did not have to be set to do only one process, but instead could be programmed and reprogrammed through the use of punch cards. Ada saw the beauty and significance of that enchanting notion, and she also described an even more exciting idea that derived from it: such machines could process not only numbers but anything that could be notated in symbols. — Walter Isaacson

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

According to the media, trans women were subject to pain and punch lines. Instead of proclaiming that I was not a plot device to be laughed at, I spent my younger years internalizing and fighting those stereotypes. — Janet Mock

For me, it's a bigger challenge, it's much harder to do and much more rewarding to do well, then just to think up stuff of your own, hit or miss, because you've got to see to it that you don't torpedo any of his punch lines. — Humphrey Lyttelton

I never knew whether his speedy speech patterns reflected amphetamine use or an amphetamine mind. He would often lead me up blind alleys or through an endless labyrinth of incomprehensible logic. I felt like Alice with the Mad Hatter, negotiating jokes without punch lines, and having to retrace my steps on the chessboard floor back to the logic of my own peculiar universe. — Patti Smith

Before I was a Discordian, I took life much too seriously. When you take life too seriously you start to wonder what the point of it all is. When you wonder what the point is in life, you fall into a trap of thinking there is one. When you think there is a point, you finally realize there is no point. And what point is there in living like that? Nowadays I skip the search for a point and find, instead, the punch lines. — Kerry Thornley

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

Don't U want someone to complete you the way Mini-Me completed Dr. Evil? Someone who shares the same tastes in music food who will finish
... my sentences? The last thing I need is someone stealing the punch lines to all my jokes. — Teresa Medeiros

Among many, many others, the following things were definitely not interesting: the pupillary sphincter, mitosis, baroque architecture, jokes that have physics equations as punch lines, the British monarchy, Russian grammar, and the significant role that salt has played in human history. — John Green

Professor Irwin Corey had some of the best timing in the world, and that is something you can't steal. He talked nonsense, not punch-lines, per se. It was a great performance thing he did and his timing was impeccable. Pat Paulsen was a master of comedy too. The Smothers Brothers' strength was not in the content, but how it was said. We had a couple of our albums, including the Purple Onion album, translated in script form. It didn't work at all. It is no wonder that writers had a hard time writing for the Smothers Brothers, because they wrote impressions, but there was something else. — Tommy Smothers

Life, it seems, delivers the best punch lines only after we've forgotten we were part of a joke. — David Arnold

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

Also, if you watch the film once, there are lots of things that you won't get because there are punch lines in the first act, the setup to which isn't until the second act. — Simon Pegg

Dangling punch lines to forgotten stories remain in the language like the smile of the Cheshire cat. — William Safire

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

The music is meant to be provocative - which doesn't mean it's necessarily obnoxious, but it is (mostly) confrontational, and more than that, it's dense with multiple meanings. Great rap should have all kinds of unresolved layers that you don't necessarily figure out the first time you listen to it. Instead it plants dissonance in your head. You can enjoy a song that knocks in the club or has witty punch lines the first time you hear it. But great rap retains mystery. It leaves shit rattling around in your head that won't make sense till the fifth or sixth time through. It challenges you. — Jay-Z

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

I think we're the only jokeless show on television. I mean really, we have no setups and no punch lines. It's not a joke show. There are funny lines and funny moments but again the comedy is born of the human experience and awkward pauses are a great part of what it is to be human. — Rainn Wilson

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

...he starts telling them about our day, embellishing it so that it almost sounds fun. It's how all good travel stories are born. Nightmares spun into punch lines. — Gayle Forman

I love hard punch lines, and I like anything that has a strong point of view. — Natasha Leggero

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

Presidents, even when they get some things right, never cease to be punch lines, and it was telling that Nixon regarded his comic potential as a metric for comparing himself to his successors. — Nancy Gibbs; Michael Duffy

This is how I think of us, when I remember our nights at Troy: Achilles and I beside each other, Phoinix smiling and Automedon stuttering through the punch lines of jokes, and Briseis with her secret eyes and quick, spilling laughter. — Madeline Miller

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

I arm myself with punch lines and a big old water gun. — Jimmy Buffett

There are no subtleties in a war zone. I think that's why comedy does so well there. It goes right for the gut. So those punch lines start penetrating the bullet-proof vests. — Jeff Ross

I think, in comedy, timing is everything. You and I could tell the same joke, but if one of our timing is off, it won't be as funny. You've gotta know when to deliver your punch-lines. — T.I.

In the end we're all just chalk lines on the concrete
Drawn only to be washed away
For the time that I've been given
I am what I am — Five Finger Death Punch

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

I don't really like actors. Actors are like terrible comedians with no punch lines. It's all about them. They talk about themselves all the time. They bore the sh - t out of you. — Joe Rogan

It's a fun job, but it's stressful because you have to be funny. You have to have punch lines and captions. Be funny now! And if you're not inspired, they don't care - be funny now! They have to fill that hole the next day. — Steve Breen