I tended to lean toward character work. I love to disguise myself.

Why do I keep performing at my age? What else am I going to do? Play golf? I tried that years ago and all I did was cuss. I can do that without the walk, cuss at Congress and let [Mark]Twain do it. "Imagine that you were an idiot. And then imagine that you were a member of Congress. Wait - I've repeated myself."

One of the problems with putting Huck Finn into a movie or on the stage is, you always make the white people stupid and racist. The point is, they don't know they're racist.

I walked the streets of New York for two years begging for a job, and I couldn't get one.

Politics has become incendiary. People don't find it so funny now so I have to be careful, but I have to wake them up with some truths and the truths I aim at them are over 100 years old. Facts that no one can dispute.

Man looks in the abyss, there's nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss.

This is a deep and personal topic in our society today. Read the papers. America is hurting because of it. For God's sake, speak up. Don't we need to learn respect for people's feelings? What is going to school for? To learn how to add?