My mum and dad taught me not to laugh at people who aren’t laughing,” she explained. “Besides, I think in life, the joke usually turns out to be on us.

Me, as myself, I don't think I'm particularly funny. But I've noticed that people in my life always have found me amusing. Which, when I was little, really bothered me.

There were two things that particularly bothered me in those days. One was that I came too fast, often before anything had happened at all, and the other was that I never laughed. That is, it did happen once in a while, maybe once every six months, when I would be overcome by the hilarity of something and just laugh and laugh, but that was always unpleasant because then I completely lost control, I was unable to regain my composure, and I didn’t like showing that side of myself to others. So basically I was able to laugh, I had the capacity, but in my everyday life, in social situations, when I was with people around a table chatting, I never laughed. I had lost that ability. To make up for this, I smiled a lot, I might also emit some laughter-like sounds, so I don’t think anyone noticed or found it conspicuous. But I knew: I never laughed. As a result, I became especially conscious of laughter as such, as a phenomenon — I noticed how it occurred, how it sounded, what it was. People laughed almost all the time, they said something, laughed, others said something, everyone laughed. It lubricated conversations or gave them a shot of something else which didn’t have so much to do with what was being said as with being together with others. People meeting. In this situation everyone laughed, each in their own way, of course, and sometimes because of something genuinely funny, in which case the laughter lasted longer and could at times completely take over, but also for no apparent reason at all, just as a token of friendliness or openness. It could conceal insecurity, I knew that well, but it could also be strong and generous, a helping hand. When I was small I laughed a lot, but at some point it stopped, perhaps as early as the age of twelve, at any rate I remember there was a film with Rolv Wesenlund that filled me with horror, it was called The Man Who Could Not Laugh, and it was probably when I heard about it that I realised actually I didn’t laugh. From then on, al

When I lived in South Africa, I was very nervous if people would laugh at me instead of with me.

People used to laugh at me when I said I wanted to be a comedian. Well they're not laughing now.

When I first said I wanted to be a comedian, everybody laughed. They're not laughing now.

And my mother said—and I remember this as if it were yesterday—my mother with a washcloth in her hand and me standing at the sink, she said, "You must have said something to get them angry." And it was an icicle just jammed into my chest. That my own mother—and with cause! It was not as if I was the greatest kid in the world. I was a troublemaker! I was a brat! I was a big-mouth pain in the ass! But that my own mother would not understand—at that moment I had what, now at age seventy-two I understand, was an enormous epiphany, which is: I really cannot support it, I cannot bear it, when people laugh at me.

When I said I was going to become a comedian, they all laughed. Well, they're not laughing now, are they?

They all laughed when I said I'd become a comedian. Well, they're not laughing now.

I can’t stand people who laugh at other people. They’d get a bigger laugh if they laughed at themselves.

I remained serious. For one thing, I thought it stupid of her to appear to believe or to wish other people to believe that nobody, really, was as smart as herself. For another thing, people who laugh so heartily at what they themselves have said, when it is not funny, dispense us accordingly, by taking upon themselves the responsibility for the mirth, from joining in it.

I was always depressed, but I could tell a joke and get a laugh. But not from my mother. She never thought my jokes were funny.

I steeled myself against laughter; I would rather die than laugh. I didn’t laugh, I did not laugh. But I died, I did die.

I'm ridiculous to feel ridiculous when I'm not. You must be laughing at me for feeling you are laughing at me if you are not laughing at me.