Janet Varney Quotes

I think in my case, I had no choice but to have a good sense of humor. I grew up with my dad, Danny Thomas, and George Burns and Bob Hope and Milton Berle and Sid Caesar and all those guys were at our house all the time and telling jokes and making each other laugh.

I saw things at an early age because my mom was a theater actress. I did a play with her when I was 10 years old.

You see, that's another thing that my parents gave me: an enormously great sense of humor.

The reason I do what I do is because I was influenced by Steve Martin, by Woody Allen, by Bob Newhart, by Carol Burnett, by Lucille Ball.

When I was nine, we'd take a bus to the seaside. Coming back, we'd take turns entertaining, singing songs and the like. I tried some stand-up comedy. I had a captive audience in that bus. Then I realized I wanted to do more than that.

My dad's sense of humor was direct and sometimes surreal - his quick wit is well known amongst our family and friends. He raised me on Spike Jones records and W.C. Fields movies, and his sense of humor fell somewhere in between.

My mom and dad are both in stand-up comedy, so that's where I started, that's where I got everything. My roots are holding the mic.

I think drama and comedy are pretty much all the same, and the issue is whether or not you have a sense of humor.

My parents are definitely my biggest role models.

I'm a huge fan of Steve Martin. He's hilarious, but he has this depth to him and this way of dealing with the difficult things in life with a sense of humor that I think has helped me as an actress.

My mother was very funny. My dad had a great sense of humor. My grandmother, too.

I always say I owe my sense of humor to 'The Muppets' because I didn't necessarily know what was going on when I watched 'The Muppet Show,' and obviously, 'Sesame Street' was made just for me.

I've always had a very dry sense of humor, and I've pretty much grown up on Will Ferrell, first on 'Saturday Night Live,' then 'Old School' and 'Wedding Crashers.'

I'm sure all parents think their kids are funny, and I'm sure a lot of kids are, whether their parents are comics or not.

I've always been into stand-up, and I always wanted to be a comic because it was like the dream job as a kid, and my brother, being the patriarch, he paved the way.

My mother was always the one with the dark, really filthy sense of humor. She was a vulgar woman. She used to tell me to do comedy before I even tried it. She was always up for any gag.

She raised us with humor, and she raised us to understand that not everything was going to be great-but how to laugh through it.

I wasn't a class clown, I never developed this comedic flair as a kid. Even when I decided to become an actor, it was just to be an actor, not necessarily a comedic actor. I wasn't that guy who struck out with women so he became really funny, and that's when the women started to like him.

When I was growing up, I was really into comedy. I listened to a lot of comedy albums. I loved Richard Pryor, but the comic that had the most impact on me was always my brother Chris, who was in the next room. It was tangible. If Chris could make it, I could try.

Some people don't have a sense of humor about certain things, and other people do.

When I was a little boy, I was fascinated by the way my dad used to laugh at the telly, and from a very early age, I had an idea of what was funny and why people laughed.

With my dad, when I was growing up I saw the amount of work that he put in.

I think the parenting of Tina and myself combined allowed our kids to really find their passion at an early age.

There's a joke in everything, the trick is finding it. The best compliment a joke can get is what Huxley said about Darwin's theory of evolution - 'Why didn't I think of that?'

I think everyone is born funny. Sadly, some lives beat it out of them. I don't know what allows someone to keep being funny and actually make a career of it.