Photo: Michael Kovac/Getty
During nearly six decades in comedy, Joan Rivers insulted many with her caustic one-liners, but she was at her best when she directed her venom at herself. In tribute, we’ve gathered 50 of her best jokes to help us laugh through all the tears.
- I have no sex appeal. If my husband didn’t toss and turn, we’d never have had the kid.
- People say that money is not the key to happiness, but I always figured if you have enough money, you can have a key made.
- I was born in 1962 … and the room next to me was 1963.
- The first time I see a jogger smiling, I’ll consider it.
- My best birth control now is just to leave the lights on.
- I’ve had so much plastic surgery, when I die, they will donate my body to Tupperware.
- My vagina is like Newark. Men know it’s there, but they don’t want to visit.
- A man can sleep around, no questions asked. But if a woman makes 19 or 20 mistakes, she’s a tramp.
- I wish I had a twin so I could know what I’d look like without plastic surgery.
- I hate housework. You make the beds, you do the dishes, and six months later, you have to start all over again.
- My husband killed himself. And it was my fault. We were making love and I took the bag off my head.
- When I was born, my mother asked the doctor, “Will she live?†He said, “Only if you take your foot off her throat.â€
- My earliest childhood memory was watching my parents loosen the wheels on my stroller.
- Don’t talk to me about Valentine’s Day. At my age, an affair of the heart is a bypass.
- My breasts are so low, now I can have a mammogram and a pedicure at the same time.
- I was the only Jewish kid in a Catholic neighborhood. They all did Hail Marys, I did Hail Murrays.
- You know it’s time to start using mouthwash when your dentist leaves the room and sends in a canary.
- Don’t tell your kids you had an easy birth or they won’t respect you. For years I used to wake up my daughter and say, “Melissa, you ripped me to shreds. Now go back to sleep.â€
- I blame my mother for my poor sex life. All she told me was, “The man goes on top and the woman underneath.†For three years my husband and I slept in bunk beds.
- Princess Diana and the Queen are driving down the lane when their car is forced off the road by masked thieves. “Out of the car and hand over your jewels.†After the thieves rob them and steal their car, Diana begins to put her earrings, necklace, and rings back on. “Wherever did you hide those,†demanded the Queen. “Where do you think?†asked Diana. “Pity Margaret wasn’t here,†said the Queen. “We could have saved the Bentley.â€
- I was so ugly that they sent my picture to Ripley’s Believe It or Not and he sent it back and said, “I don’t believe it.â€
- California is druggy, druggy, druggy. If it is white and it is on the table, they are gonna sniff it. I have a friend who O.D.ed in the beauty shop on dandruff.
- The women in California, they get scared. A guy flashes you, they go to the police, “He’s flashing! He’s flashing!†In New York, a guy flashes you, you took your embroidery hoop and played ring toss.
- Don’t you hate McDonald’s? I heard you can’t get a job there unless you have a skin condition.
- Stevie Wonder, that poor son of a bitch. Who’s going to tell him he’s wearing a macramé plant holder on his head?
- When the rabbi said, “Do you take this man,†14 guys said, “She has.†My husband bought the horseback-riding story, thank God.
- Lindsay Lohan said she wouldn’t mind being under oath because she thought Oath was a Norwegian ski instructor.
- Elizabeth Taylor is so fat, she puts mayonnaise on aspirin.
- If Kate Winslet had dropped a few pounds, the Titanic would never have sunk.
- You want to get Cindy Crawford confused? Ask her to spell mom backwards.
- I was so flat, I used to put Xs on my chest and write, “You are here.†I wore angora sweaters just so the guys would have something to pet.
- I blame myself for David Gest. It was me who told Liza Minnelli to find herself a man who wouldn’t sleep with other women.
- The whole Michael Jackson thing was my fault. I told him to date only 28-year-olds. Who knew he would find 20 of them?
- I finally found out how priests get holy water. They boil the hell out of it.
- And since we’re all adults here, let’s be brutally honest — most babies are not actually attractive. In fact, they’re weird and freakish-looking. A large percentage of them are squinty-eyed and bald and their faces are all mushed together, kind of like Renée Zellweger pushed up against a glass window.
- The most beautiful women in the world are always the dumbest. The most beautiful woman in the whole world, Bo Derek … This woman is an idiot. She studies for her Pap test.
- I was dating a proctologist with a sense of humor. We’d go out for drinks, he’d go, “Bottoms up.â€
- I was dating a transvestite, and my mother said, “Marry him, you’ll double your wardrobe.â€
- I was dating a football player. He was so dumb. The man could not count to 21 unless he was naked.
- Did you hear Tom Cruise just had a baby? He was there when it was born … He should have been there when it was conceived.
- My sex life is so bad, my G-spot has been declared a historical landmark.
- I knew I was an unwanted baby when I saw that my bath toys were a toaster and a radio.
- I saw my first porno film recently. It was a Jewish porno film — one minute of sex and nine minutes of guilt.
- Not all plastic surgeons are good. My cousin went to one and told him she wanted to turn back the hands of time. Now she has a face that could stop a clock.
- Everybody talks about multiple orgasm. Multiple orgasm — I’m lucky if both sides of my toaster pop.
- Madonna has just lost 30 pounds — she shaved her legs.
- On the Vanna White diet, you only eat what you can spell.
- The one thing women do not want to find in their stockings on Christmas morning is their husband.
- I got a waterbed, but my husband stocked it with trout.
- Want to know why women don’t blink during foreplay? Not enough time.Â