A Quote by Katherine Ryan

I really loved making my mom laugh, and I knew that she thought that I was funny. It was really valuable, in my home growing up, to be able to have a chat and participate in a conversation and be funny. Whatever I could do to make my mom laugh could either get me out of trouble or just get me more attention or get me respect in the house.
David Zucker was great! Those guys are funny. I mean, they are funny. There's a wonderful thing about doing that kind of work like Superhero Movie: You have to be real, but you also have to get the laugh. There you are, your director and the producers are right there at the monitors, and you either get the laugh or you don't. And so you just do it until you get the laugh.
When the kids were growing up, I think they thought the worst thing about me being a mom is that I would laugh at them. They would say something that they thought was serious and intense and I would laugh. I thought it was funny, but they don't want to be laughed at.
Once you realize you can make people laugh, it's a superpower. When you're really young, you don't know how to use that power, so I would just say the meanest things I could to get a laugh. I was so awful. I would make fun of kids who didn't deserve to get made fun of. I was just mean, when I was really young. You don't realize that you don't have to be mean to be funny. But, it was something that I was just able to grow into.
Someone trying to be funny probably isn't as funny as someone who doesn't want to be funny but is and can't help it. Someone being serious or angry might be funny. If you get angry, the first thing I want to do is laugh because I don't know why you're getting that angry. Pathos makes me laugh, funerals make me laugh.
Growing up, if I had been given any advice - bad or good - I probably wouldn't have been able to act on it regardless. I wasn't shy, but I'd get nervous. I got a little more confident later in high school when I realized I could get girls to pay attention to me by making them laugh.
Both of my parents are music teachers. My mother owns the school that I taught in. My brothers and sisters are musicans. My mom pushed me all the time. She knew that I could do it. She knew more than I did. She thought I would go somewhere. She gave me the job and helped me get equipment, which a lot of parents don't do. Alot of my students had to go out and fight for it.
My mom was a freethinking artist - she was wild and would do anything to get a laugh from me. She'd go in reverse through a drive-through so I could order from the window: 'Hi, can I get a milk shake?'
I always knew she was being funny, but when I tell my therapist that my mom played the trust game with me and let me fall on the ground, my therapist does not find that funny. She's like, "That's the reason for everything! That's why you have such a hard time with trust!" And I'm like, "I don't really have a hard time with trust. I thought it was funny."
I’m really not interested in women as victims. Look at me, I get the last laugh ‘cause I get to be funny about it.
I think what it is is, if you're in school and you're not that bright or good-looking or popular or whatever, and one day you say something and someone laughs, well, you sort of grab onto it, don't you? You think, well I run funny and I've got this stupid big face and big thighs and no-one fancies me, but at least I can make people laugh. And it's such a nice feeling, making someone laugh, that maybe you get a bit reliant on it. Like, if you;re not funny then you're not...anything
My grandparents really wanted me to go to Harvard. They thought that was writing your ticket for the future. How could I turn that down? But my mom knew I needed a balance. She knew that I loved basketball.
I made sure that instead of people making fun of me, like every comedian probably says, I made fun of myself first so they would get distracted and just laugh. I was pretty brutally picked on for a while growing up. It was always the really pretty girls, the hot girls and then there was me. So I had to do something to get any sort of attention.
I was getting keys for my apartment, and I asked if I could get doubles, because I'm forgetful, and the woman there said, "Yeah, but it costs $5." I was like, "Oh, okay." But then she said, "Actually, you know what, I'm just going to give it to you for free. You were in that movie Mrs. Doubtfire, and that movie really helped me out in a time when I needed it. It got me through something, and it made me laugh when I needed to laugh.
I'm not offended. Lenny Bruce taught me that everything's funny. You can make everything funny. I don't think that assassinations are funny, I don't think you can make fun of ISIS, but almost everything is funny. And If we can't laugh at ourselves, who can we laugh at? So I don't mind ethnic humor. I like ethnic humor. I like dialect jokes. Laughter is a very subjective thing. If it's funny to you it's funny. And a lot of things are funny to me.
She wasn't that tough on me, but I think she was often a little frightened - being a single parent. So it begets this quality of desired absoluteness that doesn't really exist. My sister could crack her up. She'd be getting into trouble and put the Steve Martin arrow through her head and mom would start to laugh. I didn't have the same sort of wiliness.
It's funny: most people who recognize me on the subway and stuff - it's much more they think of me as a funny guy. I get much more of people telling me how much I make them laugh, actually. Which is nice.
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