Life is no joke, but can’t be taken too seriously all the time. We need laughter, and where better to find joy than in hilarious and funny book quotes?
After all, the greatest writers of all time often possess the best wit.
These hilarious book quotes are perfect for reading aloud at your next boring dinner table party. Or share them with awkward extended relatives over the holidays.
Sincerely, sometimes we just need to brighten our days with laughter, and we don’t need a reason.
[socialpug_tweet tweet=”Sometimes we just need to brighten our days with laughter, and we don’t need a reason.” display_tweet=”sometimes we just need to brighten our days with laughter, and we don’t need a reason.”]If that’s you today, and you’re looking for some funny literary quotes, congratulations. You’ve made it. With no further adieu…
Funny Book Quotes List
Funny quote: “I don’t believe in closure. What does it really mean? Does it mean the closing of a door, the locking up of memories, the refusal to allow a flow of consciousness that may involve some measure of grief?”
Funny Quote: Martha: “You make me puke.” George: “That wasn’t a very nice thing to say.” – Edward Albee
Funny quote: “Manners, Potter,” said Snape dangerously. ”Now, I want you to close your eyes.” Harry threw him a filthy look before doing as he was told. He did not like the idea of standing there with his eyes shut while Snape faced him, carrying a wand.”
– J.K. Rowling
Funny quote: “At his usual time [Alexey Alexandrovitch] got up and made his toilet for the night.”
– Leo Tolstoy
Funny quote: I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.”
– Bill Bryson
Funny quote: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”
– Seth Grahame-Smith and Jane Austen
Funny quote: “For the better part of my childhood, my professional aspirations were simple–I wanted to be an intergalactic princess.”
– Janet Evanovich
Funny quote: “It wasn’t until I had become engaged to Miss Piano that I began avoiding her.”
– Peter De Vries
Funny quote: “The morning after noted child prodigy Colin Singleton graduated from high school and got dumped for the 19th time by a girl named Katherine, he took a bath. Colin had always preferred baths.”
– John Green
Funny quote: Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu.”
– Ha Jin
Funny quote: “We’re going to tell you about three of the children in Mrs. Jewls’s class, on the thirtieth story of Wayside School. But before we get to them, there is something you ought to know. Wayside School was accidentally built sideways. It was supposed to be only one story high, with thirty classrooms all in a row. Instead, it is thirty stories high, with one classroom on each story. The builder said he was very sorry.”
– Louis Sachar
Funny quote: When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.”
– John Wyndham
Funny quote: It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression ‘As pretty as an airport.’”
– Douglas Adams
Funny quote: This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.”
– William Goldman
Funny quote: “They love their hair because they’re not smart enough to love something more interesting.”
– John Green
Funny quote: “Everyone should be able to do one card trick, tell two jokes, and recite three poems, in case they are ever trapped in an elevator.”
– Lemony Snicket
Funny quote: “‘Do you ever think if people heard our conversations they’d lock us up?’ ‘All the time.’”
– Wendy Mass
Funny quote: “What makes big boobs and perkiness so attractive to boys? I mean, really. Two round, mounds of fat and a fake smile. Yeah, winning attributes.”
– Gena Showalter
Funny quote: “You can’t enjoy art or books in a hurry.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri
Funny quote: “(If plan KTB kill the bastard) didn’t work, well, gray would resort to Plan B: Operation Oh Sh**”
― Gena Showalter
Funny quote: “Men know that most women want to have an emotional connection with someone before they sleep with them. Men know that a lot of women think it’s romantic to be friends first, and then the friendship blossoms into a relationship. Men know that they have to jump through all these hoops first, before they can get laid. And that’s really all romance and courtship is to a man: hoops he has to jump through to get laid.”
― Oliver Markus
Funny quote: “Ah, like how Sharon Parker’s bra kind of found its way into your locker?” He leaned in, resting his elbows on the table. “Are you going to constantly bring these things up the entire time we’re dating?” “Sorry. Just using my prior knowledge to try and gauge what kind of fake boyfriend you’re going to make.” “Well, if your bitterness is any indication of the kind of fake girlfriend you’re going to be, I won’t hold my breath for you to fake put out.”
― Jennifer Shirk
Funny quote: “You know why horror-movie characters always get killed? Because they’ve never seen horror movies. They don’t know how it works. Right? But we do. So no one go into the basement alone. No one go screaming off into the woods alone. No one has any sex.”
― Carrie Vaughn
Funny quote: “Sadly for you, I think I’m going to live, Simi. You can stop slapping me now. I’ve already lost enough sense. Can’t afford to lose any more brain cells. I really really need my last three before I forget how to spell my name. It’s hard enough to pronounce.” Nick “well, poo. Not poo that you’ll live, ’cause the Simi would probably miss you if you died, but poo that I’ll miss all that good old salty boy meat. Though we needs be fatting you up some to make you really good eats. Hmmm.” Simi”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon
Funny quote: “Oh for Christ sakes. Ay carrumba, chimichanga. I have no idea what you’re saying, but shut your pretty pie hole.”
― Cristin Harber
Funny quote: “What’s not to love? I made friends with a pretty girl and now we get to plan a castle break-in. This beats the day to day kill, eat and survive.”
― Emilyann Girdner
Funny quote: “Do flat-earthers believe that other planets are also flat?”
― Oliver Markus Malloy
Funny quote: “How are you feeling?” “Like I fell out a burning building onto pavement, you?” I grumbled. “Like I was pushed out of a burning building by a maniac,” she retorted, a small smile playing across her face.”
― R.R. Virdi
Funny quote: “Sean was stung. “I do not f*ck everything that has a pulse,” he said haughtily. “I have my standards. I limit myself to endoskeletal organisms. I always go for vertebrates. And I don’t do reptiles. Ever.”
― Shannon McKenna
Funny quote: “Oh no?” he sneered, pulling a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and lighting one up. “Knowing what you’re like, the slightest sign of a discarded cigarette butt and you would’ve been crawling around on your hands and knees trying to figure out how tall the smoker was, how old he was, what zodiac sign he was, whether he’d taken a crap that morning, and Christ knows what else.”
― Tim O’Rourke
Funny quote: “It was if the devil himself had devised the perfect earthly torture for Lady Alicia Lawrence. “Now how will I occupy myself when I get to hell?”
― Celeste Bradley
Funny quote: Erroh has a plan. A simple plan. It’ll never work.”
― Robert J. Power
Funny quote: “To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness”
— Oscar Wilde
Funny quote: “You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.”
— Dorothy Parker
Funny quote: “If not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.”
– P.G. Wodehouse
Funny quote: “All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure I’d sooner go to my dentist any day”
— Evelyn Waugh
Funny quote: “I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don’t know the answer”
— Douglas Adams
Funny quote: “I don’t deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.”
— Flannery O’Connor
Funny quote: “The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years.”
— Oscar Wilde
Funny quote: “Let us toss as men do”
— Thomas Hardy
Funny quote: “Fanny rode on a lion and felt very grand. Dick chose a horse”
—Enid Blyton
Funny quote: “Passing to and fro the Mayor beheld the unattractive exterior of Farfrae’s erection in the West Walk, rick-cloths of different sizes and colors being hung up to the arching trees without any regard to appearance.”
— Thomas Hardy
Funny quote: “Multiple exclamation marks are a sure sign of a diseased mind”
— Terry Pratchett
Funny quote: “Mothers are the best lovers in the world, but I don’t mind whispering to Marmee that I’d like to try all kinds. It’s very curious, but the more I try to satisfy myself with all sorts of natural affections, the more I seem to want”
— Louisa May Alcott
Funny quote: “My brother Toby, quoth she, is going to be married to Mrs. Wadman. “Then he will never,” quoth my father, “be able to lie diagonally in his bed again as long as he lives.”
— Laurence Sterne
Funny quote: “Bag end is a queer place, and its folks are even queerer”
— J. R. R. Tolkien
Funny quote: Charles Dickens “Sir Mulberry Hawk was remarkable for his tact in ruining, by himself and his creatures, young gentlemen of fortune—a genteel and elegant profession, of which he had undoubtedly gained the head. … his custom being, when he had gained the ascendancy over those he took in hand, rather to keep them down than to give them their own way; and to exercise his vivacity upon them openly, and without reserve.”
— Charles Dickens
Funny quote: “… it’s my own particular, one and only, four-starred Pussy. The super Pussy of all old Pussies.”
— Agatha Christie
Funny quote: “Holding his candle so that he could read the coffin plates, and so holding it that the sperm dropped in white patches which congealed as they touched the metal”
— Bram Stoker
Funny quote: “I’m sorry we can’t dance,” Winterbourne answered; “I don’t dance.” “Of course you don’t dance; you’re too stiff,” said Miss Daisy. “I hope you enjoyed your drive with Mrs Walker.
— Henry James
Funny quote: “Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.”
— Herman Melville
Funny quote: “The master’s body!” the butler roared into the telephone. “I’m sorry madam but we cannot furnish it. It’s too hot to touch this noon!”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
Funny quote: “Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness”
— Seneca
Funny quote: “With what bitterness did he behold his whole erection of glory and of poetry crumble away bit by bit!”
— Victor Hugo
Funny quote: “Tut, I am in their bosoms.”
— William Shakespeare
Funny quote: “The night has come, the gang had just finished feasting, an orgy was beginning; the can of liquor was passing from mouth to mouth”
— Mark Twain
Funny quote: “They had proceeded thus gropingly two or three miles further when on a sudden Clare became conscious of some vast erection close in his front, rising sheer from the grass. They had almost struck themselves against it.”
— Thomas Hardy
Funny quote: “She well knew the great architectural secret of decorating her constructions, and never condescended to construct a decoration.”
—Anthony Trollope
Funny quote: “He receives comfort like cold porridge”
— William Shakespeare
Funny quote: “Fall down again, Bella?” “No, Emmett, I punched a werewolf in the face.”
—Stephanie Meyer
Funny quote: “I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.”
—Oscar Wilde
Funny quote: “The year was 1795. George III was dabbing the walls of Windsor Castle with his own spittle, the Notables were botching things in France, Goya was deaf, De Quincey a depraved pre-adolescent.”
— T.C. Boyle
Funny quote: “I know that journalism largely consists in saying “Lord Jones Dead” to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.”
— G.K. Chesterton
Funny quote: “Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance.”
— James Joyce
Funny quote: “Money’s a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet.”
— Henry James
Witty quote: “Do, or do not. There is no ‘try’.”
– Yoda
Funny quote: “I’d just run into my gynecologist at Starbucks and she totally looked right past me like she didn’t even know me. And so I stood there wondering whether that’s something she does on purpose to make her clients feel less uncomfortable, or whether she just genuinely didn’t recognize me without my vagina. Either way, it’s very disconcerting when people who’ve been inside your vagina don’t acknowledge your existence. Also, I just want to clarify that I don’t mean “without my vagina” like I didn’t have it with me at the time.”
― Jenny Lawson
Funny quote: “At some point during almost every romantic comedy, the female lead suddenly trips and falls, stumbling helplessly over something ridiculous like a leaf, and then some Matthew McConaughey type either whips around the corner just in the nick of time to save her or is clumsily pulled down along with her. That event predictably leads to the magical moment of their first kiss. Please. I fall ALL the time. You know who comes and gets me? The bouncer.”
― Chelsea Handler
Funny quote: “As a teenager you are at the last stage in your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.”
― Fran Lebowitz
Funny quote: “When you look like your passport photo, it’s time to go home.”
― Erma Bombeck
Funny quote: “I was a little excited but mostly blorft. “Blorft” is an adjective I just made up that means ‘Completely overwhelmed but proceeding as if everything is fine and reacting to the stress with the torpor of a possum.’ I have been blorft every day for the past seven years.”
― Tina Fey
Funny quote: “So light a fire!” Harry choked.“Yes… of course… but there’s no wood!” Hermione cried, wringing her hands.“HAVE YOU GONE MAD!” Ron bellowed. “ARE YOU A WITCH OR NOT!”
― J.K. Rowling
Funny quote: “It was once suggested to me that, as an antidote to crying, I put my head in a paper bag. As it happens, there is a sound physiological reason, something to do with oxygen, for doing exactly that, but the psychological effect alone is incalculable: it is difficult in the extreme to continue fancying oneself Cathy in Wuthering Heights with one’s head in a Food Fair bag.”
― Joan Didion
We hope you enjoyed these funny book quotes. If you ever need to see more hilarious book quotes, come back because we will continue updating this list over time. If there are any book quotes that we didn’t mention that make you laugh, please mention it into the comment below and we’ll be glad to add those in overtime as well.
Great list!
The quote about the crows carrying the baby boy is from Wildwood, not Seven Up. 😝