I'm a Jewish son of Russian-Hungarian heritage parents. Humor was very important. My whole goal was to make my parents laugh. And my whole strategy as a young man was, if I could make them laugh, I could have enough time to figure out what to do next.
I love making people laugh.
Nothing better than a good laugh and giggling over a whole bunch of nothing.
If you want to be a comedian, go out. Do a week in Des Moines, Iowa. Try to make those people laugh.
Comedy is such a personal thing. Everybody can cry at the same thing, but it's a lot harder to get everyone to laugh at the same thing.
If we can't laugh at ourselves and the human condition, we're going to be mean.
The theater is so big and dark and private. Nobody knows that I am there. I am relaxed. I forget completely I am an actress. I laugh, I applaud, I cry.
Anybody with a sense of humor is going to put on my album and laugh from beginning to end.
I am not interested in entertaining people. I think being an actor provides an opportunity to give people an experience they can connect to, reflect on, learn from, laugh at.
I always say to people that Zimbabweans are the funniest people in Africa; we even laugh at funerals. And it's true. I mean, there are so many jokes about funerals. There are so many jokes about AIDS. We find ways of coping with pain by laughing at it and by laughing at ourselves.
Whenever I open a movie, I go secretly to the theater and stand in the back and enjoy the moment. I laugh when people laugh, and when people cry, I laugh.
I'm always trying to make myself laugh. I'm the most enthusiastic audience I'm likely to find, so if it doesn't make me smile then it probably won't work on you. The jokes that only make me shrug get cut.
Relationships. Ugh. You have to laugh sometimes.
If I had to put a name to it, I would wish that all my books were entertainments. I think the first thing you've got to do is grab the reader by the ear, and make him sit down and listen. Make him laugh, make him feel. We all want to be entertained at a very high level.
Barack Obama, foreign policy wizard. I just have to laugh.
My uncle worked in emergency wards dealing with people who came in with terrible injuries. He talked about the sketch shows they would put on to lighten the atmosphere. You often find this sense of grim humor in hospitals. The injuries people are suffering are ghastly. You have to laugh at something or you'd otherwise cry.
I am a comedian: that means I laugh at things other people don't laugh at and also annoys my wife sometimes.
What I do for a living is whimsical and fun and ridiculous. I'm supposed to make people laugh. We all have that child in us. For many people, that child gets pushed into a corner. But if you want to be creative, that little kid can never go away.
With 'Good Will Hunting,' Miramax made certain the recruited audience wasn't expecting to laugh at Robin Williams like they normally do. From my limited experience, you can really blow test screenings by conducting them in the wrong way.
When I have to cry, I think about my love life. When I have to laugh, I think about my love life.
The only time I don't get nervous is if I'm doing a home club in L.A. and I know all of my friends there because then I play to my friends. When I first started doing comedy, I hated it when my friends came; it made me more nervous. Now I just try to make them laugh.
I want to make people laugh.
I'm not saying that putting on makeup will change the world or even your life, but it can be a first step in learning things about yourself you may never have discovered otherwise. At worst, you could make a big mess and have a good laugh.
I'm physically completely mal-coordinated. My best friend used to make me run for the bus just to give herself a quick, cheap laugh because I definitely don't have that sophisticated cool thing down.
I make sure that I laugh as much as possible, as its the best exercise, and if I'm really feeling the need to do some exercise, I'll go out with my best girls and dance the night away.
My mom's brother was gay, and he actually passed away from AIDS when I was 13. He was quite a character, but he also worked at the electrical plant, so he was this complicated guy with a big laugh who would wear a trucker hat and do impressions. He was gay, but to me, Uncle Alan was just the funniest person in the world.
I like to flip flop, but making your days work to find a laugh is a really good way to spend a day. I appreciate it more going away and then coming back to it.
You're trying your best to make people laugh; then if you fail, they hate you. But your intent's the same. It's not like you're trying to do evil to them.
You can't make people laugh for more than half an hour and be consistent.
The cliches are all true! My son Max has just turned two, and he's literally turned into this driven young man overnight! The terrible twos are not a myth, but he's such a laugh to be around.
I think I have a sense of mischief and that I can laugh at myself.
I have gotten a couple of letters meant for Mr. Bean aka Rowan Atkinson. These letters would say things like, 'You're so funny, you make me laugh, with your big rubbery face,' and I would say, 'You can't mean me!'
My friends say I make them laugh a lot, so I think that somewhere in me is a little comedic ability that comes out in the most inappropriate or unexpected moments. I did a lot of sketch comedy years ago. That's always in me.
If you can laugh together, you can work together.
Someone once said that to make a regular person laugh, you need to dress a guy up like an old lady and push him down the stairs. To make a comedy writer laugh, you have to push a real old lady down the stairs. I don't know who that's attributed to. I think it's Aristophanes. Or Catherine the Great.
Things that make me laugh range from a wonderful stand-up like Jerry Seinfeld, Louis C.K. and Chris Rock to my son Gabe, who does great improv work. I also look backwards to the great comedic actors like Jackie Gleason, Paul Lynde and Phil Silvers.
