Steve Allen Quotes

That is the saving grace of humor, if you fail no one is laughing at you.

As a kid I was short and only weighed 95 pounds. And though I was active in a lot of Sports and got along with most of the guys, I think I used comedy as a defense mechanism. You know making someone laugh is a much better way to solve a problem than by using your fists.

When you're small, you either are funny, or you get beat up a lot.

Everybody laughs all the time, and some of the worst things that happen make you laugh 'cause it's a defense isn't it, I suppose.

Making my family laugh when I was little - it became an addiction. It was a kind of survival.

I was a product of a divorced family and I used humor as a weapon to combat sadness. I used comedy to make my mother laugh in light of the darkness that she faced, and to me it became a very powerful tool at a very young age, at six. I saw how therapeutic it could be.

In Ronald Reagan's chaotic childhood, the imagination was armor. There is nothing unusual about that; transcending the doubts, hesitations, and fears swirling around you by casting yourself internally as the hero of your own adventure story is a characteristic psychic defense mechanism of the Boy Who Disappears.

When I was growing up, I was obviously gay, and I got heckled every day of my life. The only way I knew how to survive was to make people laugh. If I could make them laugh, I wouldn't get hung in a locker for two hours. That's a blessing.

I was the fat kid, so as a defense mechanism, I was the jokester.

There is no defense against adverse fortune which is so effectual as an habitual sense of humor.

When you have a tough childhood, you either cry or make a joke.

I don't react to a tragic happening any more. I took so many bad things as a kid and some people think I don't care about anything. It's just too hard for me to get emotional. I can't cry no more.

I was a very sensitive kid who then had to condition myself to desensitize.

Until I was about 14, I was a fat boy, or at least I looked like a fat boy. I think that being funny was a bit of a defence mechanism for me, so I ended up being a bit of a joker.

I was a timid little guy when I was a kid. I used humor as a defense; I became the class clown. But deep inside, I felt real vulnerable.

Anything traumatic in my life I've always dealt with through jokes and comedy.

My career actually started in the second grade as class clown. That's no joke. I was always making people laugh, and it was really to mask a learning disability... When it came time for me to read out loud, I would crack jokes or create a diversion.

You learn to laugh at yourself, and you also lean on comedy as a crutch to kind of take the edge off because comedians often are self-deprecating, and they cross lines that they shouldn't. Stuff like that brings a smile to my face every once in a while when needed.

That's how to make a stand-up comedian: You take a person who is uncomfortable and try to squirrel their way out of it through humor.

The age-old mistake, which has stunted countless lives, is the assumption that because physical hardship in childhood makes you physically tough, emotional hardship must make you emotionally tough.

My mum and dad split up when I was five years old, and that was quite upsetting. But ever since then, I've been very hard.

Everything that happened to me as a child was the perfect breeding ground for a rock n' roll singer. It toughened me up. I was on edge; I was needy. I needed people to like me 'cause it made me feel safe... and that gave me confidence.

I was one of the people that always got chosen last, and I think I bulked up my comedy bone to make up for my lack of friends.

I used humor as survival, as a weapon and as comfort.

I learned to make things not matter, to put a seal on my hopes and place them on a high shelf, out of reach. And by telling myself that there was nothing inside those hopes anyway, I avoided the wounds of deep disappointment. The pain was no worse than the quick sting of a booster shot. And yet thinking about this makes me ache again. How is it that as a child I knew I should have been loved more? Is everyone born with a bottomless emotional resevoir?