I don't want to be remembered. I want the nice words when I can hear them.

I never got a formal education. So my intellect is my common sense. I don't have anything else going for me. And my common sense opens the door to instinct.

I tell young comics, 'Do you want this badly enough? It's there. But you have to go get it. And if you think I'm going to give you the key to the lock of that door, there is no key, there is no lock, and there is no door.'

The day you're born, you get the pink slip on YOU. Outright ownership. You must only share that life with those that you and only you choose.

You might as well like yourself; just think about all the time you're gonna have to spend with you.

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 was onstage doing the work, adrenaline killed the pain because I never hurt in front of an audience.