I don't really tell a joke per se, I build up an attitude and it becomes a joke.

Yeah, I make fun of blacks, and why not? I'm not a black.

Everything I do on stage, I made up in saloons. I started doing it in front of people, and that became my performance. I never had writers.

Hell, do I remember the first joke? I was never a jokester.

In the old days, that was my ad-lib for hecklers in the joints I worked. It stuck with me. I hardly say it now, say, to fans, even though people do send me hockey pucks.

Once in a while, when I'm alone, I think about my age. I think, How many more years do I have on this earth? But I can't really conceive of dying. Somehow, in my head, I don't think I'll die. I know that everybody dies, of course. I just think that it'll never come to me. It's crazy, but there it is.

The man I adored, and miss him terribly, was Johnny Carson.