Wit

A lot of people like to throw around the quote “brevity is the soul of wit” from my play, Hamlet, but do they really understand what it means? Let me try to explain it. Basically, in a nutshell, at its very core, what that quote means, in substance, is that when you’re writing, or speaking, or using sign language, I suppose, if you communicate with sign language, in order to be witty — that is, to possess wit — and I should clarify that this advice is only relevant if your aim is, in fact, to be witty, which maybe it isn’t. But if it is, then what you want to do is a very specific thing that can best be conveyed by relaying an anecdote about what happened when my grandpa took me fishing once. Actually — hold on one second — I’m going to go grab my photo album. Visual aids are the soul of explaining stuff.