Don't you understand how dramatic it is to be a comic? To be a fool, to get people to laugh at this show-off? Milton Berle could take Laurence Olivier and stick him under the table if he wanted to. And so could I.

When I hit around 65, 66, I started to feel tremendous worth and incredible personal esteem. I was becoming very cognisant of my contribution to the American spirit of helping your fellow man and all of the good stuff.

People hate me because I am a multifaceted, talented, wealthy, internationally famous genius.

The doc told me I had a dual personality. Then he lays an 82 dollar bill on me, so I give him 41 bucks and say, 'Get the other 41 bucks from the other guy.'

The young man who's had the Guggenheim fortune behind him all his life - he can hire all the authorities on the subject to teach him how to do a monologue, but he's never going to have the right stuff to pull it off. If he doesn't walk out onstage needing to walk out there, he doesn't have a dream of doing well.

I have some very personal feelings about politics, but I don't get into it because I do comedy already.

I've had the greatest respect for my work in this country by Americans. Critics have no brains.