“Absolute seriousness is never without a dash of humor.”

The Humanist interview (2012)
Context: There were never that many women stand-up comics in the past because the power to make people laugh is also a power that gets people upset. But the ones who were performing were making jokes on themselves usually and now that’s changed. So there are no rules exactly but I think if you see a whole group of people only being self-deprecating, it’s a problem.
But I have always employed humor, and I think it’s absolutely crucial that we do because, among other things, humor is the only free emotion. I mean, you can compel fear, as we know. You can compel love, actually, if somebody is isolated and dependent — it’s like the Stockholm syndrome. But you can’t compel laughter. It happens when two things come together and make a third unexpectedly. It happens when you learn something, too. I think it was Einstein who said he had to be careful when he shaved because if he thought of something suddenly, he’d laugh and cut himself.
So I think laughter is crucial. Some of the original cultures, like the Dalit and the Native American, don’t separate laughter and seriousness. There’s none of this kind of false Episcopalian solemnity.

From police transcripts of incoherent deathbed confession

Books, Shock Value: A Tasteful Book About Bad Taste (1981)

Reuters Article by Jalil Hamid - Malaysian filmmaker struggles with hardline Islam https://www.reuters.com/article/us-malaysia-filmmaker-idUSKLR21119520070629 - 29 June 2007 - Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20210821072553/https://www.reuters.com/article/us-malaysia-filmmaker-idUSKLR21119520070629
Sister-hood Digital Magazine Article - Yasmin Ahmad 1958-2009 https://sister-hood.com/sister-hood-staff/yasmin-ahmad-1958-2009/ - 10 June 2020 - Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20210821102330/https://sister-hood.com/sister-hood-staff/yasmin-ahmad-1958-2009/
From Yasmin Ahmad

Migration: Multiculturalism and its Metaphors (2016)

As quoted in BBC interview with David Wigg (8 May 1969) http://web.archive.org/web/20080121033938/http://www.geocities.com/~beatleboy1/db1969.0508.beatles.html
Context: That's part of our policy, is not to be taken seriously, because I think our opposition, whoever they may be, in all their manifest forms, don't know how to handle humor. You know, and we are humorous, we are, what are they, Laurel and Hardy. That's John and Yoko, and we stand a better chance under that guise, because all the serious people, like Martin Luther King, and Kennedy, and Gandhi, got shot.

Living to Tell the Tale (2002)

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Theater