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Malcolm listened to her laughter, and for the first time in his life he knew that everything was going to be all right. Niceness, he realized, it was not enough, and Love was only part of the rest. You had to have laughter, too. Laughter would make everything come out right in the end, or if it didn’t nobody would notice.

— Tom Holt Expecting Someone Taller (1987)

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More quotes by Tom Holt

The more he asserted it, the less they believed him, which is human nature for you.

The Devil You Know (2016)

Nothing helps a lie succeed more than a generous helping of the truth.

The Devil You Know (2016)

Like fish, accountants see things in a different way from people, and details which people find unimportant are their reason for existing.

Flying Dutch (1991)

There is no word for artist in the Mysian language; instead there’s a long-winded periphrasis that translates as man-who-deceives-others-into-giving-food-by-spoiling-bits-of-wood.

The Devil You Know (2016)

Take anything to its logical conclusion and you’re likely to end up with the grotesque and the absurd.

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Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

Albert Einstein Essay to Leo Baeck (1953)

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.

William Hazlitt Lectures on the English Comic Writers (1819)

Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.

Karl Barth The Harper Book of Quotations (1993)

Care to our coffin adds a nail, no doubt,
And every grin so merry draws one out.

John Wolcot

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Tom Holt (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.