A joke is not a thing but a process, a trick you play on the listener's mind. You start him off toward a plausible goal, and then by a sudden twist you land him nowhere at all or just where he didn't expect to go.
Max EastmanPeople who demand neutrality in any situation are usually not neutral but in favor of the status quo.
Max EastmanClassic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.
Max EastmanHumor is a kind of emotional chaos told about calmly and quietly in retrospect.There is always a laugh in the utterly familiar.
Max EastmanDogs laugh, but they laugh with their tails. And a tail is an awkward thing to laugh with, as you can see by the way they bend themselves half double in extreme hilarity trying to get that rear-end exuberance forward into the main scene of action. What puts man on a higher stage of evolution is that he has got his laugh on the right end.
Max Eastman