Satire works best when it hews close to the line between the outlandish and the possible – and as that line continues to grow thinner, the satirist’s task becomes ever more difficult. – Graydon Carter
Satire of satire tends to be self-canceling, and deliberate shock tactics soon lose their ability to shock, especially when they’re too deliberate. – Herb Caen
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own. – Jonathan Swift
As ‘Possession’ progresses, it seems less and less like the usual satire about academia and more like something by Jorge Luis Borges. – Jay Parini
If you’re going to get into social criticism with absurdity and satire, you can’t be politically correct when you do that. – John Cusack
There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins. – Isaac Hayes
I like the George Romero films, which were really great, social satire movies; really twisted. – John Cusack
I try and write satire that’s well-intentioned. But those intentions have to be hidden. It can’t be completely clear, and that’s what makes it comedy. – Bo Burnham
The idea of 24-hour news, if you really step back, is pretty insane. Just even saying ’24-hour news’ almost has satire laced in it. – Adam McKay
Now, Richard Pryor was unique. Many misunderstood his humor. He lit up the hallway, but they didn’t understand his use of profanity. He didn’t use it just to be using it; he used it in the context of his satire. – Bill Cosby
If you write satire, the guilty pleasure these days is that there’s just so much material about. On the other hand, if you have a family it can be depressing. – Carl Hiaasen
The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little – or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives. – Anthony Trollope
The British ballads became a new kind of form in their hand. And out of them came the blues, a new kind of song of commentary and satire, a song form which, after all, has become the main musical form of the whole human species. – Alan Lomax
We’ve managed to keep a spirit of fun, I guess, of urban satire and finding new and odd interesting angles to the ways of life to put on the stage. – Adolph Green
You can’t make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you’re doing is recording it. – Art Buchwald
A lot of people tend to glorify the role of satire and comedians. They put them up as role models, as fighters for the truth and against tyranny, and I think that’s overrated. – Bassem Youssef
Satire is fascinating stuff. It’s deadly serious, and when politics begin to break down, there is a drift towards satire, because it’s the only thing that makes any sense. – Ben Nicholson
I wrote an ITV drama in the 1960s, a satire on management theory that starred Leonard Rossiter. I’m also a poet and have had work in the ‘Spectator.’ – Maurice Flanagan
Satire also allows you to make fun of every different aspect. It allows you to make fun of both sides. It allows you to make fun of everything, really, so you can do it in a harmless way. – Neill Blomkamp
I cry all the time when I watch ‘Glee’ because I don’t know if it’s satire or melodrama and that makes me feel like the writing is aware of itself, and that makes it OK to cry. – David Sedaris
It seems like there’s a lot of people who just do not understand satire. They think it’s weird. There’s people who just don’t understand you portray something or just explore a character, it means you’re condoning it, saying this is the way to live. – Mike Judge