Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not.
When you're writing these things, you're in a room making each other laugh, you really have very little sense of political correctness or incorrectness. This is a question that Europe tends to ask and America doesn't.
My sister was born a couple years after I was, and I realized that I wasn't getting enough attention, as much attention as I used to before she showed up, and then I learned pretty early on that if I could do a silly dance or make grown-ups laugh, then the attention would come back to me, and I would be accepted.
I always laugh and say I met God on the way up, and I got to know him on the way down. And so, as I'm crashing and losing everything, a lot of people run to God when they are struggling. And I was no exception.
I try to write the books I would love to come upon that are honest, concerned with real lives, human hearts, spiritual transformation, families, secrets, wonder, craziness - and that can make me laugh.
I like a twisted sense of humour. On 'A History of Violence,' David Cronenberg and I would be doing the grimmest scenes and laugh a lot.
I've got some great guy friends. They can start out as crushes. But when you realize something isn't going to happen, you make a choice whether or not the friendship is worth it. And it usually is. Then you can laugh about the fact that you used to have a crush on him or he had one on you.
If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special.
Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.
I'll say things that are serious and put them in a joke form so people can enjoy them. We laugh to keep from crying.
Why is it you feel like a dope if you laugh alone, but that's usually how you end up crying?
Growing up doing those Kiwanis Clubs, doing those Cub Scout banquets, doing those church shows, I learned to find that sensibility that most people could laugh at - that all ages and demographics could laugh at.
I can laugh on cue, and it sounds real. People laugh with me.
I don't think there's ever an inappropriate time to laugh! I'm a curious person. So if someone laughs, I want to know why.
There's a scene in 'Singin' in the Rain' where this guy dances with a giant doll while singing 'Make 'Em Laugh.' I remember loving the pure physicality of it.
Humor is a wonderful way to deal with our suffering because if we can laugh at our troubles, we can feel better. Thich Nhat Hanh is a special man who has helped millions with their suffering with incredible technique. But he doesn't know real suffering, because he has not dated as much as I have.
It's not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it's the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.
Organizations are accumulations of historical debris. They are not consciously thought. So when you ask the Education Ministry ‘What's your core function and who's your client?' they laugh at you. When I say that the client is the Afghan child - and the Ministry is an instrument, not the goal - it's greeted with shock. It's a new idea.
We laugh at liberals who declare that their favorite spending programs should be exempt because the spending is for a noble cause.
I would make people who bullied me laugh, so that's my defense mechanism.
