I have spoken to expert audiences occasionally, but then no audience is expert over the whole range of things I want to explore.

I reserve the right to tell shaggy dog stories or even common jokes as part of what I'm doing. I don't give a damn if half the audience walks out.

From this entertainment industry, may the gods of language protect us.

While I don't script and I don't use other performers, I think my taste for underlying precision gives me something in common with Allan and George Brecht.

The ancient Greek "oral poets" all had this anxiety about the deficiencies of their memories and always began poems by praying to the muse to help them remember.

I tended to emphasize the secular, the casual, the colloquial, the vernacular against the sacred.

My mother turned into a professional widow. She couldnt understand why I wanted to be an engineer; she thought I should be a chicken farmer.