I changed the face of comedy. I used to be funny.

If they'd wanted a nice parrot, they wouldn't have asked for me.

Any misfortune that happens to another person is funny. If it happens to someone else and not me, it's very funny.

I was the class podiatrist. I never made it to class clown. I wasn't funny enough. I would examine feet and prescribe and ointment. It was a sad childhood.

With the Internet, if you erase something it just means you have to spend another half-minute to find it.

I have always felt comedy and tragedy are roommates. If you look up comedy and tragedy, you will find a very old picture of two masks. One mask is tragedy. It looks like its crying. The other mask is comedy. It looks like its laughing. Nowadays, we would say, How tasteless and insensitive. A comedy mask is laughing at a tragedy mask.

One thing I can take credit for, along with the rest of show business, is when the red ribbons were out, we cured AIDS. Any advancements that came towards fighting AIDS were not done by scientists or doctors - it was people with little ribbons on their lapels.