I got lucky. I won the San Francisco Stand-Up Comedy Competition in 1977 while I was still at San Francisco State.

I think free speech is probably the coolest thing we have in this country, and again, you can label it hate speech and dismiss it, and then you're allowed to censor it.

After years of begging, I got my parents to get me a little Craig tape recorder, a reel to reel. Then I started recording voices, or recording Jonathan Winters off television and stuff like that.

If I only ran when nothing hurt, I would never run.

That's why modern corporate movie making has become so laborious that comedians are kind of kicked out by 50.

You know, sometimes you can't just take an armadillo, put it in the barn, light it on fire and expect it to make licorice.

It's almost like he's started to sound even more exotic the more people started doing him. I don't know why, but there's just something about Al Gore that makes me laugh.

A mom and dad found an S&M magazine under their 10-year-old son's bed, and the dad said, 'Well, we sure can't spank him.'

If she were a President, she'd be Babe-raham Lincoln!

Am I not turtley enough for the Turtle Club? Turtle! Turtle!

I know it's a cliche, but the whole family is just whacked. I mean, we're all out of our minds. They're the funniest, most eccentric bizarre people I've ever met, my siblings.

It's hard to know what to say sometimes, when someone does something so nice. It's hard to know where to look.

There is value in any experience that exercises those ethical restraints collectively called sportsmanship.

Sometimes, out of really horrible things come really beautiful things.

Fearlessness is the mother of reinvention.

If your ethical model defeats you, change the model.

Style is the image of character.

Cowardice, when done correctly, can be its own kind of bravery.

The hardest task needs the lightest hand or else its completion will not lead to freedom but to a tyranny much worse than the one it replaces.

Music is a science, in many ways it's mathematical.

The last thing you know about yourself is your effect.