Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple

On stage or in the movies I could do whatever I wanted to. I was free.

We gave each other a hug, [Richard Pryor] said how much he admired me, I said how much I admired him, and we started working the next morning, and we hit it off really well, and he taught me how to improvise on camera.

Actors fall into this trap if they missed being loved for who they really were and not for what they could do - sing, dance, joke about - then they take that as love.

A lot of comic actors derive their main force from childish behavior. Most great comics are doing such silly things; you'd say, 'That's what a child would do.

My favorite author is Anton Chekhov, not so much for the plays but for his short stories, and I think he was really my tutor.

I found a very diabolical way of making myself suffer - not in the same way [my mother ] was suffering but to prevent me from enjoying my own life.