"Charles Dickens" (1939)
Context: The thing that drove Dickens forward into a form of art for which he was not really suited, and at the same time caused us to remember him, was simply the fact that he was a moralist, the consciousness of ‘having something to say’. He is always preaching a sermon, and that is the final secret of his inventiveness. For you can only create if you can care. Types like Squeers and Micawber could not have been produced by a hack writer looking for something to be funny about. A joke worth laughing at always has an idea behind it, and usually a subversive idea. Dickens is able to go on being funny because he is in revolt against authority, and authority is always there to be laughed at.
“I got used to dealing with groups of boys and getting on with life in unpleasant circumstances and being smart and funny and subversive at the expense of authority.”
On his childhood years in a boarding school. The Pythons' Autobiography of the Pythons (2003) by Bob McCabe.
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Eric Idle 6
British comedian, actor, singer and writer 1943Related quotes
Source: Out of Step: The Autobiography of an Individualist (1962), p. 147
It's great.
Amy Selwyn, Associated Press (December 21, 1997) "Nathan Lane: The String's The Thing", The Orlando Sentinel, p. F1.
“Some people get a feeling of power from being unpleasant.”
Source: Rite of Passage (1968), Chapter 9 (p. 126).
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