Punch Line Quotes

#1. 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

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

Maureen Johnson

#3. 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

#4. 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

#5. I always told everybody the perfect joke would be where the setup and punch line were identical.

Norm MacDonald

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

Maggie Stiefvater

#7. 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

#8. 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

#9. 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

#10. Life is a cruel, horrible joke and I am the punch line.

Carrie Fisher

#11. I'm not much for setup ... punch line. I talk about my kids. I talk about my wife.

Al Madrigal

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

Franklyn Ajaye

#13. I don't think there's a punch-line scheduled, is there?

Vince Lombardi

#14. 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

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. [ ... ] 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

#18. 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

#19. 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

#20. 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

#21. Never go for the punch line. There might be something funnier on the way.

Jerry Stiller

#22. 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

#23. 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

#24. 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

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

Stephenie Meyer

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

Bryan Fields

#27. You always felt they were pawns in an indifferent universe, butts of an existential joke with no punch line.

Poppy Z. Brite

#28. 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

#29. 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

#30. 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

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

Edward Abbey

#32. 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

#33. The fine line between genius and madness is a punch line. Duck, you idiot!

Brian Spellman

#34. If they were the jokes, I was the punch line.

Kimberly Novosel

#35. 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

#36. 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

#37. 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

#38. 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

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

Various

#40. 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

#41. 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

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

Mindy McCready

#43. History is like a long, twisted joke. You never know when the punch line will come.

Laksmi Pamuntjak

#44. 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

#45. 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

#46. 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

#47. 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

#48. 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

#49. 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

#50. 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

#51. 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

#52. 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

#53. The punch line is 'knock the morale of an employee and organizational productivity is punctured'.

Henrietta Newton Martin

#54. 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

#55. 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

#56. My greatest fear is that the audience will beat me to the punch line.

David Mamet

#57. 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

#58. 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

#59. I can still run in a straight line, and I can still throw a punch.

Pierce Brosnan

#60. 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

#61. 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

#62. That's no little kid. That's Jason Steed, the biggest damn hero you will ever see!

Mark A. Cooper