Here lies a plain and simple Jew who wrote in plain and simple prose.

Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.

No matter how bad things get, you got to go on living, even if it kills you.

You see how it is, my dear friends. There's no pleasing everyone. It's hopeless to even try, and the more you play the peacemaker, the less peaceful things become.

One cannot live on potatoes alone. It is said that one wants bread with potatoes. And when there's no bread, a Jew takes his stick, and goes through the village in search of business.

If you listen carefully, you get to hear everything you didn't want to hear in the first place.

Gossip is nature's telephone.

The rich swell up with pride, the poor from hunger.

If somebody tells you you have ears like a donkey, pay no attention. But if two people tell you, buy yourself a saddle.

Without love our life is ... a ship without a rudder ... like a body without a soul.

You can take a Jew out of a shtetl, but you cannot take a shtetl out of a Jew.

Much of what we called "depression" was really dissatisfaction, a result of setting a bar impossibly high or expecting treasures we weren't willing to work for.

Dream the life you desire. Then live it with passion and love.

I believe that we have the ability to change our lives using our imaginations. Imagination is a muscle—the more you use it, the stronger it gets.

What white man can say I never stole his land or a penny of his money? Yet they say that I am a thief.

It had more layers than an onion. These writers meant business. There was a level for everybody. Your major could be celestial mechanics, and there'd be celestial-mechanics jokes.

I think I know what it is but don't ask me to play it

I realized some of the pitfalls of being well-known; it was nice if you were successful, but it made it just that much harder to take when you failed.

We don't have a prayer of defeating the Red Threat of our generation without a long boom of almost unprecedented duration.

I want a girlfriend who can eat like me

I didn't come to Hollywood to get on magazine covers or start my Porsche collection or to enjoy that kind of lifestyle, to go to the right parties and meet the right people.