Continuing to do stand-up is always a challenge because the audiences and the environments in which you work very often differ.

I don't want to find the secret. I'm afraid all the joy will go out of it if I find the secret.

Because of the spin-meisters and the focus groups and the way politics is run now. It's run by polls and focus groups. So it's even more true today, I think, than it was some 40 years ago.

I gave up accounting. I went in for about six months writing ad copy. I was fired from that, and then another guy and I did a kind of poor man's Bob and Ray kind of syndicated radio show. Then I decided to stick it out and see what happened. I'd give it a year, a year became two years, and then two years became three years, and then along came the record album.

Jack Benny was, without a doubt, the bravest comedian I have ever seen work. He wasn't afraid of silence. He would take as long as it took to tell the story.

Stammering is different than stuttering. Stutterers have trouble with the letters, while stammerers trip over entire parts of a sentence. We stammerers generally think of ourselves as very bright. My own private theory is that stammerers have so many ideas swirling around their brains at once that they can't get them all out, though I haven't found any scientific evidence to back that up.

The only thing I have never done is a Broadway play. I'm not sure I have the discipline necessary to do a Broadway play. I know it holds a fascination for certain actors.