Edmund White

In the 1970s in New York, everyone slept till noon. It was a grungy, dangerous, bankrupt city without normal services most of the time. The garbage piled up and stank during long strikes by the sanitation workers. A major blackout led to days and days of looting. The city seemed either frightening or risible to the rest of the nation.

American Novelist

Michiko Kakutani

Indeed, 'The Second Plane' is such a weak, risible, and often objectionable volume that the reader finishes it convinced that Mr. Amis should stick to writing fiction and literary criticism, as he's thoroughly discredited himself with these essays as any sort of political or social commentator.

American Critic

Peter Bergen

Common sense would tell you that the idea that Saudi Arabia was paying for bin Laden's expenses while he was living in Abbottabad is simply risible. Bin Laden's principal goal was the overthrow of the Saudi royal family as a result of which his Saudi citizenship was revoked as far back as 1994.

American Journalist

Antony Gormley

If your work doesn't speak to people, it's beyond comprehension and risible, but if people engage with it, you become tarred with the brush of populism.

British Artist

Arabella Weir

The crushing, pitiful, and frequently just plain risible pathos of an unsuccessful actor/performer's life is well charted.

British Comedian

Nick Harkaway

The notion of our leaders as patrician ascetics of unassailable virtue is risible.

English Novelist

Use 'risible' when something is so absurd it goes beyond usual amusement to provoke hearty laughter.

Exaggeratedly Funny

'Risible' often implies ridicule; it's not just funny, but deserving of mockery.

Negative Connotation

Use 'risible' to describe a situation that's ironically amusing, where laughter stems from disbelief or sarcasm.

Irony Usage

'Risible' can convey a level of contempt when used to describe pitiful attempts or ideas.

Disparaging Humor

Writers use 'risible' to create a humorous atmosphere or to introduce a light-hearted character.

Literary Device

'Risible' often relates to something visually absurd, like a clown's appearance.

Visual Amusement

 "Learn as if you'll live forever." This is what I'm passionate about. It is precisely this. It is this inextinguishable, undaunted appetite for learning and experience, no matter how risible, no matter how esoteric, no matter how seditious it might seem.