The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.
The telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.
I learned lots of dirty jokes very young. There was this girl who told me them. The gang I led went in for shoplifting and pulling girls’ knickers down. Other boys’ parents hated me. Most of the masters hated me.
I don’t mind making jokes, but I don’t want to look like one.
A joke is at most a temporary rebellion against virtue, and its aim is not to degrade the human being but to remind him that he is already degraded.
A good joke will sell quicker than a good poem, and, measured in sweat and blood, will bring better remuneration.
A dirty joke is not, of course, a serious attack upon morality, but it is a sort of mental rebellion.
