A joke is a very serious thing.

Jokiness allows a constant trivializing: as if by joking someone is suspending judgment on what is being said. She didn’t mean anything by it; lighten up. A killjoy knows from experience: when people keep making light of something, something heavy is going on

The specific element that occurs in every single successful joke is surprise. Surprise. A line of logic is going one way, and then, it doesn't. I call it "making non-sense". You go "That doesn't make any sense, but I get it." That-- That's the words that people use to describe a joke: "I got it."

A joke is a miracle.

A joke's a very serious thing.

Joking is a barrier between man and the world. Joking is the enemy of love and poetry.

A joke is like building a mousetrap from scratch. You have to work pretty hard to make the thing snap when it is supposed to snap.

It does seem to me that the job of comedy is to offend, or have the potential to offend, and it cannot be drained of that potential. Every joke has a victim. That’s the definition of a joke. Someone or something or an idea is made to look ridiculous....In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.

There's only one joke worth laughing at and it's the joke of existence.

A joke can only get laughs for one reason because it resonates.

My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world.

Death often is the point of life's joke.

And thank you, also, for the joke."
"The joke?"
"Why truly—the best joke is but a simple statement of truth."…
He mounted, flapped the reins, and, as the gray gelding broke into a trot he said to himself: "A joke indeed, but it is a pity that men do not laugh at it more often.

There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for avast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. He bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker. That odd sort of wayward mood I am am speaking of, comes over a man only in some time of extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so that what just before might have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now seems but a part of the general joke.