“Poetry is like making a joke. If you get one word wrong at the end of a joke, you've lost the whole thing.”

“Jokes are funny only in context. There is no such thing as abstract clever word play. Words have meaning in the world in which we live, not in the abstract. Take away the politics, and there is no joke. The joke wouldn't make any sense. if the joke is funny, it's funny precisely because it's racist and sexist.”

“Ah, Signor Halt,' he said uncertainly, 'you are making a joke, yes?''He is making a joke, no,' Will said. 'But he likes to think he is making a joke, yes.”

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

“You young men have too many jokes. When there are no jokes you've nothing left.”

“She probably thought I was making a dumb joke, but sometimes history sounded like a dumb joke. History was either a dumb joke or a cruel joke.”