While you're improvising, you may come up with something which will break him up. As soon as that smile comes out, you know that, hey, we're having fun.

My whole act is confession.

As much experience, education and awareness as one can attain is important for a comedian.

The most memorable performance was my appearance in concert in Carnegie Hall. The first standup to do so.

The Steve Allen Sunday night show had the right to two options after my first performance.

Unquestionably, standup comedy is and has always been an art form.

We teach reading, writing and math by [having students do] them. But we teach democracy by lecture.

A hotel is a place that keeps the manufacturers of 25-watt bulbs in business.

I am careful with my material and presentation.

The old problems - love, money, security, status, health, etc. - are still here to plague us or please us.

I was an actor before becoming a comedian.

Predator and prey move in silent gestures, on the seductive dance of death, in the shadows cast by the vultures of the night. ☥

And, corny as it may sound, I do cherish the bond between me and the audience, the minority that follows my stuff and always makes me glad it's us against the world.

The Novelist, afraid his ideas may be foolish, slyly puts them in the mouth of some other fool and reserves the right to disavow them.

By undue profundity we perplex and enfeeble thought; and it is possible to make even Venus herself vanish from the firmament by a scrutiny too sustained, too concentrated, or too direct.

Pictures can be pretty deceptive.

I let it ring. I wanted to breathe for a few minutes, and I could think of nothing that couldn't wait. Besides, I had paid almost $50 for an answering machine. Let it earn its keep.

I am having the time of my life and can't wait to perform live for all of my fans.

As so often happens, I discover that it would have been better to keep my mouth shut.

A single question can be more influential than a thousand statements.

What makes human life - which is inseparable from this moment--so precious is its fleeting nature. And not that it doesn't last but that it never returns again.