When you quit school at an early age, I think you have a lifelong need to show the world - and maybe yourself - that you're really smart after all.

Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.

There are a lot of little things about our bodies that we all know, but we never talk about. That's what interests me. These are practically universal experiences; nobody mentions them! Some of them are disgusting. Some of them are appallingly revolting and degrading even to the most degenerate mind. So let's get started with a couple of them.

The person who is most a part of me is the performer, is the standup, the guy who says, "Hey look at me, listen to this!" I do that because that's what I do, I love doing it.

No matter how you care to define it, I do not identify with the local group. Planet, species, race, nation, state, religion, party, union, club, association, neighborhood improvement committee; I have no interest in any of it. I love and treasure individuals as I meet them, I loathe and despise the groups they identify with and belong to.

If the reason for climbing Mt. Everest is that it's hard to do, why does everyone go up the easy side?

The Class Clown album was done totally sober. I'd realized what a hell I'd made for myself and I cleaned up completely for three months. You can hear the clarity of my thinking and of my speech on that album.