Nathan Lane Quotes

“I am not a sad clown. I am not a sad clown.”

“Dwight is a sad clown. You've seen those paintings of sad clown.”

“The clown is a creature of chaos. His appearance is an affront to our sense of dignity, his actions a mockery of our sense of order. The clown (freedom) is always being chased by the policeman (authority). Clowns are funny precisely because their shy hopes lead invariably to brief flings of (exhilarating?) disorder followed by crushing retaliation from the status quo. It delights us to watch a careless clown break taboos; it thrills us vicariously to watch him run wild and free; it reassures us to see him slapped down and order restored. After all, we can condone liberty only up to a point. Consider Jesus as a ragged, nonconforming clown--laughed at, persecuted and despised--playing out the dumb show at his crucifixion against the responsible pretensions of authority.”

“The clown may be the source of mirth, but - who shall make the clown laugh?”

“There was something about clowns that was worse than zombies. (Or maybe something that was the same. When you see a zombie, you want to laugh at first. When you see a clown, most people get a little nervous. There's the pallor and the cakey mortician-style makeup, the shuffling and the untidy hair. But clowns were probably malicious, and they moved fast on those little bicycles and in those little crammed cars. Zombies weren't much of anything. They didn't carry musical instruments and they didn't care whether or not you laughed at them. You always knew what zombies wanted.)”

“With apologies to Judy Garland and Cole Porter, all the world does NOT love a clown. John Wayne Gacy might have been the final nail in the coffin in terms of anyone associating clowns with funny (if a bunch of clowns die, do they all fit into one coffin?)”

“Established politicians are also bumping into a new cast of characters within corridors of legislative power. In 2010 parliamentary elections in Brazil, for example, the candidate who won the most votes anywhere in the country (and the second-most-voted congressman in the country's history) was a clown - an actual clown who went by the name of Tiririca and wore his clown costume while he campaigned. His platform was as anti-politician as it gets. "I don't know what a representative in congress does," he told voters in YouTube video that attracted millions of voters, "but if you send me there I will tell you". He also explained that his goal was "to help needy people in this country, but especially my family".”

“I wasn't the class clown. I wasn't that obvious. There would be a circle of guys, and they're watching the class clown. And I'm standing in the back, and I turn to the guy next to me and I say something funny to him, and he starts to laugh. And the guy next to him says, 'What did he say?'”

“He thought he saw some horses, too, and a clown, but it was the faces of all those dead raptors that really bothered him. And maybe that clown a little bit.”

“A clown needn't be the same out of the ring as he has to be when he's in it. If you look at photographs of clowns when they're just being ordinary men, they've got quite sad faces.”