Every man imagines that he will turn his suit like a double agent, that it can be twisted to his will with irony or comedy, that the man can undermine its origins.
A. A. Gill
It would no doubt be very sentimental to argue - but I would argue it nevertheless - that the peculiar combination of joy and sadness in bell music - both of clock chimes, and of change-ringing - is very typical of England. It is of a piece with the irony in which English people habitually address one another.
A. N. Wilson
I want to see Brian Williams with no irony wearing a mustache.
Adam McKay
Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding.
Agnes Repplier
The irony is of course that my career has lasted a whole lot longer than some of the people I've parodied over the years.
Al Yankovic
To me the biggest irony of this lifetime that I'm living is that for someone who thrives in the public eye in the creative ways that I do, I actually don't enjoy being in the public eye.
Alanis Morissette
In a world where irony reigns, where you have to separate, protect and laugh at anything that is honest or has an emotional charge, I bet for catharsis. I like to invest emotionally in things. And catharsis, when it touches the emotional vein, can open the doors of even those who protect themselves.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Irony is a great tool to deal with things. It's an intellectualization, a way to go above things, which can work.
Irony became the head that bit its tail and then there is no way out.
The irony is that we're really good at comedy in Britain, but for some reason, we make very few comedy films. And when we do, they're either quite American in style, or very Richard Curtis. And I like Richard Curtis, but I think only Richard Curtis should write Richard Curtis films, and other people should try and find their own style.
Alice Lowe
I have survivor skills. Some of that is superficial - what I present to people outwardly - but what makes people resilient is the ability to find humour and irony in situations that would otherwise overpower you.
Amy Tan
Bourgeois values aren't just for white people. The irony is: Bourgeois values can help minorities get ahead.
Amy Wax
We are all tourists in history, and irony is what we win in wars.
Anatole Broyard
Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.
Anatole France
As irony would have it, the very person who inspired me to write a memoir... was the only person to be ejected from it. My brother didn't appear in 'Out of Egypt.'
Andre Aciman
Americans are not renowned for having a sense of irony.
Andrew Dominik
The main business of a lawyer is to take the romance, the mystery, the irony, the ambiguity out of everything he touches.
Antonin Scalia
Cervantes is the most important Spanish writer. But he is not the most representative of the Spanish. His irony, his sense of humor - they are too subtle to seem Spanish.
Antonio Munoz Molina
Many people think making a film about history... about war... about the Holocaust, it might be heavy, dramatic and traumatic. I don't see things like that... you can find irony everywhere. It's how I look at life.
Arnon Goldfinger
That is where the irony of the film comes off, in terms of the language it employs - where he tries desperately to be a 'TV Dad,' to give advice and it's so pat it becomes ridiculous.
Atom Egoyan
I was a bit of a humour black sheep. I would make these jokes full of irony and dark cynicism and that just didn't work when I was seven, people did not laugh.
I love British television. I love the irony, I love the authenticity and I love the roles I get put up for.
Listen: our culture is saturated with irony whether we know it or not.
I'm so sick of sarcasm and irony, I could kill! Sincerely, the real root of things is love and sacrifice.
I think that you can fall into bad habits with comedy... It's a tightrope to stay true to the character, true to the irony, and allow the irony to happen.
This is what the establishment is scared of: Of joy, the sense of humour, of irony.
People in the U.K. share my bemusement with the United States that America doesn't share with itself. They have a sense of irony, which America doesn't have, seeing as it's being run by fundamentalists who take things literally.
Humor is everywhere in that there's irony in just about anything a human does.
I do think we've become so reliant that the phones are never out of our reach. We're always trying to stay connected that way and the irony is that it's actually disconnecting us from everything else because we're not just focused on what's in front of us; we focus on what's in our hand or off to the side.
I used to get so many letters from students about the ending of 'Pro Femina.' So I had a stamp made that said 'irony, irony, irony' to put on a postcard and mail it back.
There is not much irony when people are being happy on screen.
Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony.
Clap an extinguisher upon your irony if you are unhappily blessed with a vein of it.
We didn't understand irony yet in the '80s; we just kind of existed at face value, so there was no nerd cool yet because the digital revolution was still in its infancy.
I have three sons, as different from each other as any three humans could be but connected by their shared love of Guitar Hero. I'm lucky to be married to a man I can call my soulmate without any irony whatsoever.
The irony here is this administration is spending more money on climate change research and development than any administration in all the rest of the industrialized world combined.
My generation has a hard time being genuine and enthusiastic. There's a lot of irony in our culture.
The irony of the political rise of the plutocrats is that, like Venice's oligarchs, they threaten the system that created them.
The irony of the Supreme Court hearing on these cases last week and of the outright hostility that the Court has displayed against religion in recent years is that above the head of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is a concrete display of the Ten Commandments.
I still see the world as a place of bitter irony and black humour, failed hopes, dashed plans. I hope to make my work sparer, to outgrow my desire to show off.
Of course the 19th century remained in blissful ignorance of post-modern irony, and the dime novels were made without end.
I always thought the biggest failing of Americans was their lack of irony. They are very serious there! Naturally, there are exceptions... the Jewish, Italian, and Irish humor of the East Coast.
I've always gravitated towards those ultimate lines in songs, the line you grab on to. That line in 'Smells Like Teen Spirit,' 'Here we are now/Entertain us' - the irony, the antagonism; that's always stuck with me.
The irony is that, coming from a white-collar British background, I tend to play blue-collar Americans!
Everyone that is not an ultra-conservative recognizes the irony of FOX's 'Fair and Balanced' moniker, which only accentuates its actual bias.
'Sabotage' was an opportunity. That was journeyman work, but the irony is I learned more off that movie on what filmmaking is and isn't than everything else combined. A lot of lessons, and it will impact me for the rest of my career.
If you have a sense of irony or humour, you're usually cut down, as you're usually distorted or misinterpreted. So it does lead to us being slightly more dour and staid and predictable than would otherwise be the case, which I personally find quite frustrating - because if you don't laugh occasionally in my job, you cry most of the time.
People use irony as a defense mechanism.
I can't deny the impact of, obviously, becoming a father and having my son come into this world, and even becoming a husband. The irony is that, when people think that in certain ways it softens you, in many ways, I'm more defensive and more on guard and more frightened and more angry at everything in this world now that I have them to worry about.
The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates.
