Humor as Defense Quotes

At bottom the world isn't a joke. We only joke about it to avoid an issue with someone, to let someone know that we know he's there with his questions; to disarm him by seeming to have heard and done justice to his side of the standing argument.

I don't think comedy necessarily comes from a dark place. But I do think what a lot of us have in common is that, growing up, being funny was a coping mechanism.

I've heard all kinds of crazy rumors about myself. I've even heard that I'm pregnant! I've become real good about laughing things off - I figure I'd better get used to it.

My family were hitters. If you made them laugh, they didn't hit you. My dad wouldn't hit me if I got him with humor right between the eyes.

I'd been shy since childhood, constantly full of self-doubt. And as an actor, I'd been so scared of failing that I made my career - and myself - a big joke.

Vera said: 'Why do you feel you have to turn everything into a story?' So I told her why: Because if I tell the story, I control the version. Because if I tell the story, I can make you laugh, and I would rather have you laugh at me than feel sorry for me. Because if I tell the story, it doesn't hurt as much. Because if I tell the story, I can get on with it.

When I made mistakes, people used to laugh. I could have learnt better, but I've always liked to make people laugh.

In my deepest parts of sadness, I'm always making a joke or being sarcastic.

I wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, and I wasn't the biggest, so I got real good at running my mouth and making people laugh and using humor as a way to not get into fights.

Humour is the most engaging cowardice. With it myself I have been able to hold some of my enemy in play far out of gunshot.

That was my earliest maladaptive coping mechanism I forged when I was a kid. I found that my fists weren't going to do any significant protective work for me, so my mouth was it. Making my father laugh was a way to control him.

I was a precocious only child, and then I went through a fat, awkward stage for several years, so I learned to fall back on my humor and personality when I was growing up. It's how you survive, so I think it was more of a natural progression for me, developing into comedy.

I realise there are situations where I camp it up, make myself into a sort of novelty character to ease things along. Like, if I ever feel uncomfortable in a situation, I can just make myself into this funny Will-and-Grace-guest-star type of person, and maybe people will not pay attention to the deeper things going on.

The funniest people I know were, not necessarily troubled, but had a harder time in school or were shy or picked on or something like that. I think that you rely on it. 'Well, I don't think I'm cute and no one wants to hang out with me - I'd better start trying to make people laugh.' I think there's an element of that in there.

When I started, I wanted to be thought of as tortured and seductive, not funny, but humor tends to be a reflexive part of a person's sensibility. It's an almost impossible thing to teach anyone, which leads me to believe that it's intuitive.

For a Catholic kid in parochial school, the only way to survive the beatings - by classmates, not the nuns - was to be the funny guy.

Sometimes the funnier you are, the more vulnerable and scared you are underneath it all. So I think, for me, comedy was always a defense. It was a weapon so that you can't hurt me.

When your name is Twinkle, you are a bookworm, and a fat child, then you have to be ready to be made fun of. As a child, I used my fists a lot, but then the tongue seemed like a better option. So I started using words as a sword to jab fun at myself.

Back then I was called Dumbo because of my ears. I was called Fatty, too. It was hurtful so I became like the class clown. I became the one who was kicked around.

'Johnny' was a coping mechanism who could take those things which could have ordinarily destroyed me, by tweaking my past and throwing it back out there, getting laughs from things that would have otherwise upset me.

Trolls have never bothered me. I am someone who looks at it and laughs.

I have never fully exorcised shames that struck me to the heart as a child except through written violence, shadowy caricature, and dark jokes.

I'd always used humour as a weapon, as a protection. But being able to make people laugh is a way of not getting in too deep; it's a quick, transient fix.

Personally I don't spend much time thinking about being funny. For me it's always been just a way to get by, a way to be likable yet to remain removed. When I speak up, it's not because I have any particular answers; rather, I have a desire to puncture the pretentiousness of those who seem so certain they do.

I was pretty locked up emotionally as a kid - my family situation was tumultuous. But I was extroverted. So when I was in pain, I would tell jokes instead of expressing myself.