People are brought up to think, "It's nice to be modest. It's nice to hide your light under a bushel." Well, bullshit! I've never bought that. In my business, the only thing you've really got is your talent; it's the only thing you have to sell.

People are brought up to think, "It's nice to be modest. It's nice to hide your light under a bushel." Well, bullshit! I've never bought that. In my business, the only thing you've really got is your talent; it's the only thing you have to sell.

You become successful, the way I see it, only if you're good enough to deliver what the public enjoys. If you're not, you won't have any audience; so the performer really has more to do with his success than the public does.

There's a lot of hypocrisy in audiences. I'd never dream of telling even on a nightclub stage, let alone my show, some of the jokes that are told in a lot of the living rooms from which we get those letters!

I demand my right to a private life, just as I respect that right for everybody else.

Happiness is seeing your son drafted the same day he's been accepted to an expensive college.

Everybody I meet in public seems to want to audition for me. If I ask a guy what time it is, he'll sing it to me.