“People, particularly over-moralistic Americans, have often seen me as a pessimist and humourless to boot, yet I think I have an almost maniacal sense of humour. The problem is that it's rather deadpan.”
As quoted in "Age of unreason" by Jeannette Baxter in The Guardian (22 June 2004)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
J. G. Ballard 78
British writer 1930–2009Related quotes

“I have always been — I think any student of history almost inevitably is — a cheerful pessimist.”
Quoted in "Jacques Barzun '27: Columbia Avatar" http://www.college.columbia.edu/cct/jan06/cover.php by Thomas Vinciguerra, Columbia Today (January 2006)

“I have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humour.”
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1961)
Ham and Tongue.
One-Half of Robertson Davies (1977)
Context: I have never consciously "used" humour in my life. Such humour as I may have is one of the elements in which I live. I cannot recall a time when I was not conscious of the deep, heaving, rolling ocean of hilarity that lies so very near the surface of life in most of its aspects. If I am a moralist — and I suppose I am — I am certainly not a gloomy moralist, and if humour finds its way into my work it is because I cannot help it.
Jewish Chronicle, 23 February 2007 http://website.thejc.com/home.aspx?AId50455&ATypeId1&searchtrue2&srchstrGiles%20Coren&srchtxt0&srchhead1&srchauthor0&srchsandp0&scsrch0

2010s, Democratic National Convention speech (2012)