You're not a man until your father says you're a man.

The audience will always forgive you for being wrong and exciting, but never for being right and dull.

Jay Leno is wonderful and a good friend, but it will always be the Carson show to a lot of people.

I had an Indian Scout motorcycle during high school, but I never could take it to school. My dad would sneak out at night and pull the spark-plug wires.

Goldie [Hawn] is one of the sharpest ladies I've ever worked with. She doesn't miss a thing. She's my greatest audience. She laughs at all my stories and in the right places, too.

I'm really much more like Phil Potter from [the 1979 film] Starting Over. People do think I'm the Bandit [from Smokey and the Bandit ], and I'm a lot more serious than that.

I had known Hal [Needham] for a while by the time he moved in, so I was sure we'd get along well, and we did. He'd go off and do his gigs and I would do mine, and when we were lucky we got to work on the same ones.