My ability to keep cool in a crisis is based entirely on not knowing all the facts.

Sometimes you have to avoid mentioning things because people's feelings are tender.

We all know you can get AIDS from sex, but did you know that you can get sex from aides?

I write for a radio show that, no matter what, will go on the air Saturday at five o'clock central time. You learn to write toward that deadline, to let the adrenaline pick you up on Friday morning and carry you through, to cook up a monologue about Lake Wobegon and get to the theater on time.

I love rhymes; I love to write a poem about New York and rhyme 'oysters' with 'The Cloisters.' And 'The lady from Knoxville who bought her brassieres by the boxful.' I just feel a sort of small triumph.

This is the big reason most humorists fail. Drunks don't read books.

Humor has to surprise us; otherwise, it isn't funny. It's a death knell for a writer to be labeled a humorist because then it's not a surprise anymore.