“I read once that explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog," Mark said. "You find out how it works, but the frog dies in the process.”
Source: Lady Midnight
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Cassandra Clare 2041
American author 1973Related quotes
“Once you've dissected a joke, you're about where you are when you've dissected a frog. It's dead.”
Banquets of the Black Widowers (1984), p. 49; comparable to "Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind." — E. B. White, in "Some Remarks on Humor," preface to A Subtreasury of American Humor (1941)
General sources
"Some Remarks on Humor," preface to A Subtreasury of American Humor (1941)
A very similar remark is often attributed to White, but may actually be a paraphrased version of the above statement: "Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it."
“As my mother once said: The boys throw stones at the frogs in jest.
But the frogs die in earnest.”
Part 8, Chapter 10 (p. 196)
Source: Fiction, The Female Man (1975)
“The Teachings of Don B.: A Yankee Way of Knowledge”, pp. 7–8.
The Teachings of Don. B: Satires, Parodies, Fables, Illustrated Stories, and Plays of Donald Barthelme (1992)
“We are born princes and the civilizing process makes us frogs.”
““We can only hope.”
“That’s like the frog said when he seen the stork.””
Source: Fiction, The Book of the New Sun (1980–1983), The Urth of the New Sun (1987), Chapter 46, "The Runaway (p. 328)
“I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog.”
"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (1865)
By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)
Variant: There's nothing deeper than love. In fairy tales, the princesses kiss the frogs, and the frogs become princes. In real life, the princesses kiss princes, and the princes turn into frogs.
Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
288: I'm Nobody! Who are you?; In some editions "June" has been altered to "day".
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1960)