
“Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.”
Quoted in Theatre Arts Magazine, December 1955 http://books.google.com/books?id=jkNNAAAAYAAJ&q=%22A+kiss+can+be+a+comma+a+question+mark+or+an+exclamation+point%22&pg=PA8#v=onepage
“Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.”
“Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.”
Variant: Multiple exclamation marks,' he went on, shaking his head, 'are a sure sign of a diseased mind.
Source: Reaper Man
a remark made in the House of Commons responding to a Laborite speech; reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989).
Disputed
“One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.”
Defending record shop proprietor Christopher Seale against obscenity charges for displaying advertisements for Sex Pistols' LP Never Mind the Bollocks, Nottingham Magistrates Court (14 November 1977)
“The kiss…. was not meant to seduce, it was meant to mark a woman's soul.
Chloe”
Source: The Dark Highlander