Comedy is an amazing calling. Once you get that first laugh, it's hard to turn away. Then, of course, you're hooked and you have to learn how to survive in the business.

I was a high school throw-out.

My father was a dreamer - my hero. He was a smart, tough guy from Poland, a cutter of lady's handbags, an old socialist-unionist who always considered himself a failure. His big line was: 'Don't end up like me.'

Larry David finds a way to make jokes about the Holocaust. It would never have occurred to me. And it was funny.

If you stop and think about it, nearly all great humor is at the expense of someone or something.

My father helped me leave. He said, 'It's all out there, it's not here.'

When I was in the hospital they gave me apple juice every morning, even after I told them I didn't like it. I had to get even. One morning, I poured the apple juice into the specimen tube. The nurse held it up and said, 'It's a little cloudy.' I took the tube from her and said, 'Let me run it through again,' and drank it. The nurse fainted.