Before you develop a conscience, torture is amusing.

Cruelty generally cannot conceptualize itself as cruelty, and part of the reason for that is calling cruelty what it is takes the fun out of it. [...] Cruelty is only pleasurable as long as they're able to convince themselves it's something other than cruelty, "Justice served".

...you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy

Fate has a cruel sense of humor, don't you think?

He knows that you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy.

Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy.

Alas, Siddhartha, I see you suffering, but you're suffering a pain at which one would like to laugh, at which you'll soon laugh for yourself.

Theater of Cruelty means a theater difficult and cruel for myself first of all. And, on the level of performance, it is not the cruelty we can exercise upon each other by hacking at each other’s bodies, carving up our personal anatomies, or, like Assyrian emperors, sending parcels of human ears, noses, or neatly detached nostrils through the mail, but the much more terrible and necessary cruelty which things can exercise against us. We are not free. And the sky can still fall on our heads. And the theater has been created to teach us that first of all.

You are permitted to be cruel sometimes, and you are allowed to fall apart, and feel every emotion they tell you not to feel.

You can't really be strong until you can see a funny side to things.

When we intended to enjoy being cruel, we must transform our victim into either a beast or a god.

It is always cruel to laugh at people, of course, although sometimes if they are wearing an ugly hat it is hard to control yourself.

He knew you can't really be strong until you can see a funny side of things.

Nothing is more curious than the almost savage hostility that Humour excites in those who lack it.