Nora Roberts Quotes

There is a relationship between humor and fear. Think of all the gags you ever heard that have to do with dismemberment, or something that's horrible in one way or another, even if it's just horrible in the sense that somebody's being embarrassed. What do kids laugh at? Kids laugh if your fly's down. That's hilarious. But for the kid whose fly is down, it's a horrible situation.

Some of my fear and anxieties surrounding faith, I think, provides some good comedy for my act.

Comedies are doing well because I think people want to laugh and not think about everything for a little bit.

I get miserable if I don't eat.

Why is it when you're dieting, you crave everything?

My dad is afraid of my laugh.

Fear is what makes comedy funny.

Even in the things that look most frivolous there has to be the threat of something quite painful to make the comedy work. I suppose the play of mine that's best know is NOISES OFF, which everyone thinks is a simple farce about actors making fools of themselves. But I think it makes people laugh because everyone is terrified inside themselves of having some kind of breakdown, of being unable to go on. When people laugh at that play, they're laughing at a surrogate version of the disaster which might occur to them.

The things we laugh at are awful while they are going on, but get funny when we look back. And other people laugh because they've been through it too. The closest thing to humor is tragedy.

All the energy of their frustration and fear going into their laughter.

At some point, you realize that people might be laughing at your jokes because they're afraid not to laugh.

I think about Old Nick carrying me into the truck, I'm dizzy like I'm going to fall down. "Scared is what you're feeling," says Ma, "but brave is what you're doing." "Huh?" "Scaredybrave." "Scave." Word sandwiches always make her laugh but I wasn't being funny.

I always think I'm terrible. So it's always a relief when I find out that I wasn't. I've had roles where I realized that I was in way over my head - and that is my biggest fear.

The biggest laughs are based on the biggest disappointments and the biggest fears.

Ten years from now you'll laugh at whatever's stressing you out today. So why not laugh now?

What happens if you get scared half to death twice?

Most comedians I know are quite serious, anxious people who find life rather difficult. As a consequence, they make people laugh.

Laugh at your worries and insecurities. View your anxieties with humor. It will be difficult at first, but you'll gradually get used to it.

A crisis + time = humor.

Write what makes you laugh not what you think will make someone else laugh.

A laugh is the loud echo of a sigh; a sigh the faint echo of a laugh.

I think they were afraid that some of us would try to kill ourselves or something because they looked very tense and one of them kept touching his beard.

A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more's the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.

A good laugh is as good as a prayer sometimes.

The men who cannot laugh at themselves frighten me even more than those who laugh at everything.