I never got beaten up, because I was a wisecracking jokester. I could make a bully laugh before he delivered a punch.
I go through my comments sometimes, and I'll just take snapshots of the terrible ones and send them to my friends. I know it's horrible, but they actually make me laugh. They make my day.
As soon as I go into a dark subject, like discussing the people I've loved and lost, I off-road into absurdist comedy perversion. It's both a means of protection and a kind of denial, a blessing and a curse. Wait, it's not a blessing at all. I guess it would be a bad habit and a curse.
Things that I feel really sad about, I talk about. That way, if it's funny, it doesn't hurt anymore.
Treating war as farce is one way soldiers deal with it.
To make fun of an administration, to make fun of anything, Mark Twain said, is the last defense of democracy.
There's a hysterical, tired sense of humor that comes after working 14 hours a day, six days a week. I like those things because they take the pressure off the constant stress.
I've met a lot of people who've lost their jobs and they still have a sense of humor.
My father passed away when I was 12, so it was very difficult. But I was always the class clown. I don't know why - maybe as an escape. But then I was sent away to military prep school.
To me, in life, if you have a sense of humor about it, that's how you deal with anything.
I didn't bother with trash-talking people's moms, wives, or girlfriends. I was like, 'Hold on, man, you mean to tell me you're making $10 million a year? That's $9 million, $999,999 too much!' That ate them up.
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.
It's really funny - when I'm depressed or I'm having a hard time, I'll write really fun stuff. And then when I'm really happy, I write really depressing stuff.
People process pain differently. My family, we were pretty humorous about things that went on.
I was 10th of 11 kids in an alcoholic, abusive, poor family. We all want things that we can't have. And I found comedy.
I'm interested in people's darkness - and humor in the darkness.
I've had people tell me that I should just be sad and not joke around on Twitter, but they don't understand that joking and being deeply sad are very close to each other. I'll have a horrible memory that I find hysterical one day, and the next day I'll cry about it.
The rejection that we all take and the sadness and the aggravation and the loss of jobs and all of the things that we live through in our lives, without a sense of humor, I don't know how people make it.
I've done a lot of death cartoons - tombstones, Grim Reaper, illness, obituaries... I'm not great at analyzing things, but my guess is that maybe the only relief from the terror of being alive is jokes.
I'm a comedian, and I definitely see the humor in a lot of things. I am also sad a lot. I cry often and easily. I think you're supposed to feel all kinds of things.
I think I used comedy as a mechanism: if I could make the other kids laugh, I wouldn't get beaten up or teased as much.
There was plenty of dysfunction in my family and I went to Catholic School with these psychotic nuns. I would always try to be funny to lighten the mood.
I think shows that are completely dramatic are a lie. People use humor to cope. That is how we deal with things. In the darkest situations, there's humor. And if you don't show that, you're not being true to real life.
I used comedy to deflect a lot of situations; if you make someone laugh, they don't want to punch you in the face.
I was actually pretty shy in school. My defense mechanism was to be the class clown. I remember getting into a lot of trouble for being disruptive, and I was brought in front of the headteacher, who said: 'What's going to happen to you; what are you going to do when you grow up?' and I said: 'Well, I'm obviously going to be a comedian.'
