Greatly talented performers don't know - often spectacularly - what's best for them, don't know what their talents really are, and don't know what's just plain wrong for them.

I feel sorry for the poor kids whose parents feel they're qualified to teach them at home. Of course, some parents are smarter than some teachers, but in the main I see home-schooling as misguided foolishness.

Every comic can report a few 'gift from the gods' moments.

When I'm doing an appearance somewhere and taking questions from the audience, I can always count on: 'Tell about the guy who died on your show!'

It's no fun being a specimen.

All three of my parents - I also had a stepmother - were teachers, and my dad taught high school, and as he always reminded me when I was going to spend some money on something, 'Your mother and I, in the Depression, had to decide whether to spend a dime on a loaf of bread or if we could go to a movie with it.'

Why anyone, by dying, should thereby be declared beyond criticism, innocent of wrongdoing, suddenly filled with virtue and above reproach escapes me.