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.'

This is the pain pacemaker. I've got a battery under my skin. From that battery are two electrodes that go into the spine where they cut bone away to accommodate it. Now I put on the power here. If I have the pain, the stimulator starts. It's tingling, like when your foot falls asleep, you know?

Comedy is a man in trouble. And without it, there's no humor.

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.

Don't give me paper - I can get the same lawyer who drew it up to break it. But if you shake my hand, that's for life.

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

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