My talent was the weapon, the power, the way for me to fight. It was the one way I might hope to affect a man's thinking.

Real success is not on the stage, but off the stage as a human being, and how you get along with your fellow man.

There are lines that I know are going to get a belly laugh, but after a few shows I get sick of hearing myself say them so I drop them.

Tap dancing all started with the old clog waltz.

To appear on the stage drunk, to have them leave there and remember me making drunken mistakes, that was death.

Talk about handicap - I'm a one-eyed Negro Jew.

The ultimate mystery is one's own self.