I stop and look at traffic accidents. I won't hang around, but when I hear something is terrible, as bad as it is, I've gotta look at it.

As a matter of fact, when people ask where my 'point of view' comes from, it was there in one of the first sketches we wrote for [Dean] Martin and [Jerry] Lewis.

We had two African American writers [Eric Monte and Michael Evans] on the show ['Good Times'] that knew Cabrini Green inside and out, and that's why we set it there.

The American people may not be the best-educated, but they're very wise at heart.

I wanted to work with Bert Lahr [the 'Cowardly Lion' in 'The Wizard of Oz'], and I did.

I guess because the shows were activist in their own way - the marriage of my public activism and my career activism, you know - people understand me very well. They also understand there's a very strong bipartisan part in all of this.

Originally, with all the shows, we went looking for belly laughs.