If you take five white guys and put 'em with five black guys, and let 'em hang around together for about a month, and at the end of the month, you'll notice that the white guys are walking and talking and standing like the black guys do. You'll never see the black guys going, "Oh, golly! We won the big game today, yes sir!" But you'll see guys with red hair named Duffy going, "What's happenin'?"

I always knew I could hold people's attention and make them laugh every 30 or 40 seconds, and I got approval and attention for that, so the behavior was reinforced. Later, that became an important skill on the street corner.

Tell people an invisible man in the sky created all things, they believe you. Tell them what you've painted is wet, they have to touch it to believe.

It's the old American Double Standard, ya know: Say one thing, do somethin' different. And of course this country is founded on the double standard. That's our history. We were founded on a very basic double standard: This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free.

There's a humorous side to every situation. The challenge is to find it.

Humor is based on surprise, and surprise is a milder way of saying shock. It's surprise that makes the joke.

When you visualize the recent past, do you see it as being somewhere over on the left?