“Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke.”
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Joss Whedon 107
American director, writer, and producer for television and … 1964Related quotes
“When the going gets tough, the tough make cookies.”
“Living is a pretty grim joke, but a joke just the same.”
A letter to his wife Polly (October 1938) http://bernie.cncfamily.com/sc/excalibur.htm, quoted in Bare-faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard (1987), p. 81 http://www.discord.org/~lippard/bfm/bfm05.htm#81.
Context: Living is a pretty grim joke, but a joke just the same. The entire function of man is to survive. The outermost limit of endeavour is creative work. Anything less is too close to simple survival until death happens along. So I am engaged in striving to maintain equilibrium sufficient to at least realize survival in a way to astound the gods. I turned the thing up so it's up to me to survive in a big way... Foolishly perhaps, but determined none the less, I have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently that it will take a legendary form even if all books are destroyed.
“Necessity makes a joke of civilization.”
In Joy Still Felt (1980), p. 124
General sources
“It's really tough to make it to the Paralympic Games”
Jagseer Singh on the size on Indian Contingent to the 2012 London Paralympics. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/sports/more-sports/others/With-more-support-we-can-do-wonders-Jagseer-Singh/articleshow/15576449.cms
“They're making a joke of our universe”
An American Prayer (1978)
“It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future”
The earliest citations of this proverb, from the mid-twentieth century, refer to it as Danish in origin. See http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/10/20/no-predict/
Disputed, Misattributed
“How to make God laugh? Tell Him your plans.”
Source: The Other Side of the Story
“No night is so dark, no situation so dire, but the intervention of the gods cannot make it worse.”
Source: The Goblin Quest Series, Goblin Hero (2007), Chapter 3 (p. 42)