quolira quolira.com
I am not a morning person. Then again, I'm not really an afternoon or evening person either.
502 / 1172

About this quote

Meaning

The joke depends on a small twist: Garfield appears to be about to make a familiar self-deprecating admission about not liking mornings, but then extends the complaint to cover the entire day. The punchline reframes laziness not as a morning problem but as a complete lifestyle. It is a cheerful confession of total indolence, made funny by its honesty and by the logical tidiness with which it dismantles any remaining pretense of productivity.

Context

This line comes from the Garfield comic strip, created by cartoonist Jim Davis. Garfield, an orange tabby cat, became one of the most widely syndicated comic strip characters in the world, built almost entirely on jokes about his love of sleep, his hatred of Mondays, and his bottomless appetite. The strip found its audience by turning laziness into a kind of philosophy, and lines like this one work because they say out loud what many readers feel but would never admit. The humor is gentle and self-aware rather than cynical.

About the author

Jim Davis is an American cartoonist who created Garfield in the late 1970s. The strip went on to become one of the best-known comic strips in history, appearing in thousands of newspapers worldwide and spawning merchandise, television specials, and films. Davis has spoken about designing Garfield deliberately as a universally relatable character, someone whose flaws, primarily laziness and greed for food, are exaggerated versions of impulses most people recognize in themselves. His work made a particular brand of deadpan, comfort-seeking humor familiar to generations of readers.

Up next

“Every morning I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work.”

Robert Orben · widely attributed

“I have always been a quarter of an hour before my time, and it has made a man of me.”

Horatio Nelson · attributed

“It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.”

John Steinbeck · On Writing, attributed

“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”

Blaise Pascal · Lettres provinciales, 1657

“The bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret.”

Charles Caleb Colton · Lacon, 1820

“I don't like mornings. They start too early.”

Groucho Marx · widely attributed

“I have a dream that one day I will wake up and feel rested.”

Groucho Marx · widely attributed

“Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard's Almanack, 1735

“I never knew a man who was good at making excuses who was good at anything else.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard's Almanack, attributed

“Sleep is good, he said, and books are better.”

George R.R. Martin · A Clash of Kings, 1998

“Think before you speak. Read before you think.”

Fran Lebowitz · The Fran Lebowitz Reader, 1994

“No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.”

Confucius