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comically QUOTES

comically QUOTES

1 " Modern Romans insisted that there was only one god, a notion that struck Alobar as comically simplistic. Worse, this Semitic deity was reputed to be jealous (what was there to be jealous of if there were no other gods?), vindictive, and altogether foul-tempered. If you didn't serve the nasty fellow, the Romans would burn your house down. If you did serve him, you were called a Christian and got to burn other people's houses down. "

― Tom Robbins , Jitterbug Perfume

2 " As sneakily addictive as a game of Pong (which was named, we're told, after the narrator's dad), this zany zip-line of a novel takes the piss out of the Asian-American 'good immigrant' story. Full of charming antiheroes making comically bad choices, the story dazzles us with its absurdity, which makes its eventual wisdom--about lineage, ethnicity, and the meaning of family--all the more wonderfully surprising. "

3 " 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 , The Apple that Astonished Paris

4 " Betty Knot was sitting on the porch now with her old mongrel dog. Both of them fast and peacefully asleep in the shade, almost comically so, the widow leaning in her rocker with her mouth open wide and the old dog sprawled at her feet. And seeing them there made him smile and then unexpectedly saddened him with a sudden forceful clarity. It was as though he had looked behind the scene on the porch across the street into some terrible scene in the future. Because they each were all the other had in the world by way of comfort and it was possible for him to understand in that moment the cruel eventuality that was blooming there. They were both so damn old. He sensed a sort of fate about them and sensed too that it would descend upon them soon, that soon either the woman would lose the dog or the dog would lose the woman and they had been together since the dog was a pup. When death came to one the other would be left alone, no familiar hand to pat the dog or cool wet nose to nuzzle the hand, and there would be no consoling either dog or woman, something fragile lost forever in some awful rending. "

― Jack Ketchum , The Lost

5 " How small and neat and comically serious the other men looked, with their grey-flecked crew cuts and their button-down collars and their brisk little hurrying feet! There were endless desperate swarms of them, hurrying through the station and the streets, and an hour from now they would all be still. The waiting mid-town office buildings would swallow them up and contain them, so that to stand in one tower looking out across the canyon to another would be to inspect a great silent insectarium displaying hundreds of tiny pink men in white shirts, forever shifting papers and frowning into telephones, acting out their passionate little dumb show under the supreme indifference of the rolling spring clouds. "

― Richard Yates , Revolutionary Road

6 " We turn around and there stands Aidan, looking like he just won a million dollars. He can't keep his eyes off Ivy." Hey, Aidan," I greet. " I'd like you to meet Ivy." " I am quite pleased to meet your acquaintance." Ivy gently shakes his hand.Finally getting a grip, Aidan returns the shake, his goofy grin reappearing on his face. " Yeah. I'm Aidan. Good to meet you, too." " Rylan has told me so much about you." Aidan rubs his chin, a comically sly glint in his eyes. " Oh really? Did he say how dashing, brilliant, and incredibly handsome I am?" " No." I shakes, completely unaware it's all a joke. " Rylan said you were loud and that if it was not for him, you'd still be stuck in the third grade." I snort into my water as Aidan scowls." But he also says you're a good brother, a trustworthy friend, and very funny." She breaks off giggling. " And I see what he means. You should see the look on your face!" Oh, ya mean this?" Aidan puts his hands up and wiggles his fingers as his expression contorts into something even crazier. Ivy continues giggling; even I let out a chuckle feeling my nerves disappear. No more worrying with the whole " meet my friends" situation. "

7 " Farrell had seen pure white drunkenness before, but not often enough to recognize it at sight. He knew the thing itself, however--the freight train rattling and lurching comically from hilarity to slobbering sorrow, picking up speed as it passed through wild, aimless anger straight on into wild sickness; and then, running smoothly and almost silently now, into a dark place of shaking and sweating and crying, and out again with no warning to where a dazzling snowy light made everything very still. "

― Peter S. Beagle , The Folk of the Air

8 " Does your ma know you're this silly?" she demanded tartly.He nodded, comically sad. " The few gray hairs she has on her head are my doing. But" — with an exaggerated change of mood — " I send her plenty of money, so she can pay to have them dyed!" " I hope she beat you as a child," Onua grumbled. "

9 " This afternoon I sat at my window and alternately wrote at my new serial and watched a couple of dear, amusing, youngish maple-trees at the foot of the garden. They whispered secrets to each other all the afternoon. They would bend together and talk earnestly for a few moments, then spring back and look at each other, throwing up their hands comically in horror and amazement over their mutual revelations. I wonder what new scandal is afoot in Treeland. "

― L.M. Montgomery , Emily's Quest (Emily, #3)

10 " I don't believe that." She seems like suck a force,this reasonable girl who kills with a turn of her fingers. She would have left all this behind, if she had the chance. " I honestly don't remember," she sighs " I don't think I was strong in life. Now it seems like I loved every moment, that every breath was charmed and crisp." she clasps her hands comically to her chest and breaths in deep through her nose, then blows it out in a huff. " I probably didn't. For all my dreams and fancies, I can't recall being...what would you call it? Perky? "