Suddenly, I was thirty, very unhappy entertaining people in their forties, and here came a group of people in their teens and twenties who had similar anti-authority problems and similar dreams and wishes, hopes for mankind. So I gravitated toward them.

There is nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine ... been here 4 1/2 billion years. We've been here, what, a 100,000 years, maybe 200,000. And we've only been engaged in heavy industry a little over 200 years. 200 years versus 4 1/2 billion. And we have the conceit to think that somehow we're a threat? The planet isn't going away. We are.

Children should be taught to question everything . . . everything they read and everything they hear.

When I'm not actually doing my work, I'm planning it or thinking about it or reading things that on some level are transformed into performance fantasies. I have no active interests.

I was taken to the hospital for observation. I stayed several days, didn't observe anything, and I left.

I don't consider myself a cynic. I think of myself as a skeptic and a realist. But I understand the word "cynic" has more than one meaning, and I see how I could be seen as cynical. "George, you're cynical." Well, you know, they say if you scratch a cynic you find a disappointed idealist. And perhaps the flame still flickers a little, you know?

For an entertainer, part of the thing you do is just style. And the coke did help me get into great runs of pure form.