Ian Ziering Quotes

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 definitely have managed to overcome dyslexia now to become a fully functional human being but things were a lot more difficult when I was younger.

I have this horrible sense of humor where I think discomfort is funny - partly because I experience discomfort a lot, and it's a way of laughing at it and getting a release.

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

It's not hard for me to be funny in front of people, but most of that is just horrified nerves taking the form of what makes people laugh, and afterwards I'd always feel dreadfully depressed, kind of self-induced bi-polar disorder.

I got through with my ability to mimic others and make people laugh. I swaggered through life, but, in reality, I lived in fear pretty much every day. I acted like a completely normal person, and I suppose I was good at it. But, inside, it was a very different story.

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.

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

Many comedians and comedy writers have shared the childhood experience of learning to joke to protect themselves from neighborhood bullies when challenge or physical defense were not among the sensible options.

Gallows humor is part of our coping mechanism. It's part of our grief process. If we don't know what else to do, we laugh. That's a very real thing.

A lot of time, people enter the most depressing situations, and they are the funniest people on Earth, because they have to be. It's a coping mechanism.

I spent most of my days in school being a class clown. I never shut up. By the time I was in middle school, I had myself a personal aide.

I've used my sense of humor as a coping tool. It's gotten me through a lot of challenging times.

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.

Humor was a good way to hide the pain.

My coping mechanism with my dyslexia is to use wit and humor.

Many times what cannot be refuted by arguments can be parried by laughter.

One of the things the police officers told us in the first minutes of being with them is that the way that they cope with their job is by using a lot of inappropriate humour. It's really a lovely opportunity to try to challenge our ideas of what it is to deal with complex issues, and that they're not always dower. Having that kind of humour along with the pathos for what people are going through is a really nice challenge.

There are a lot of questions I keep asking myself about why I do comedy. I guess I laugh to keep from crying. And I guess if you ever get me crying, I might not stop. This is the way I look at tragedy or else I'll cry.

I used humor to avoid being picked on as a kid. Or I would try and make my parents laugh, so I wouldn't get in trouble. But as a kid, I would watch Flip Wilson and I would memorize his whole routine, listen to Bill Cosby's records constantly, Steve Martin, Carol Burnett, Lucille Ball. I just drank that stuff up and loved it.

A person can go along quite awhile if they get a good day every once and again.

Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers.

I think if you have a comic perspective, almost anything that happens you tend to put through a comic filter. It's a way of coping in the short term, but has no long term effect and requires constant, endless renewal. Hence people talk of comics who are "always on." It's like constantly drugging your sensibility so you can get by with less pain.

At first the kid kicking the back of my airplane seat was enraging. Then I imagined it was a broken massage chair and I kinda liked it.

We have to joke about it because the alternative is to be scared