Stephen King on laughter

Get busy living, or get busy dying.

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them⁠—words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out.

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them that I have the heart of a small boy…and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

Mark Twain1835–1910“The Chronicle of Young Satan” (ca. 1897–1900, unfinished), published posthumously in Mark Twain’s Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (1969), ed. William Merriam Gibson (pp. 165–166 in the 2005 paperback printing, )

Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.

Victor Hugo1802–1885

There are three things which are real: God, human folly, and laughter. Since the first two pass our comprehension, we must do what we can with the third.

John F. Kennedy1917–1963Aubrey Menen, Rama Retold (1954), p. 231