When I started out in 1960, I thought it might possibly last a couple of years. I never expected it to last 42. I take great satisfaction in that longevity.

Comedians are never really on vacation because you're always at attention... that antenna is always out there.

I think you should be a child for as long as you can. I have been successful for 74 years being able to do that. Don't rush into adulthood, it isn't all that much fun.

I love portraying the totally indifferent person.

I'm most proud of the longevity of my marriage, my kids, and my grandchildren. If you don't have that, you really don't have very much.

I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down'.

Laughter gives us distance. It allows us to step back from an event, deal with it and then move on.

People with a sense of humor tend to be less egocentric and more realistic in their view of the world and more humble in moments of success and less defeated in times of travail.

It's getting harder and harder to differentiate between schizophrenics and people talking on a cell phone. It still brings me up short to walk by somebody who appears to be talking to themselves.

I was never a Certified Public Accountant. I just had a degree in accounting. It would require passing a test, which I would not have been able to do.

I still feel thirty, except when I try to run.

We can do so much if we just Believe in our own potential.

I would rather be able to appreciate things I can not have than to have things I am not able to appreciate.

At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction.

I love Germany so much I'm glad there are two of them.

Our Western science, ever since the 17th century, has been obsessed with the notion of control, of man dominating nature. This obsession has led to disaster.

Composition and choreography were always very important to me and I choreographed for my earliest training.

Columbus not only sent the first slaves acroiss the Atlantic, he sent more slaves than any other individual

I don't have this fantasy about marriage anymore. Everyone says it takes hard work. Well, it kind of does - and I'm much more pragmatic about romance than I used to be.

Poetry, that is to say the poetic, is a primal necessity.

If two norms conflict, if they are mutually inconsistent, then at least one of them must be false.