At first I had no skills in writing comedy. I didn't know what a joke was, but, as someone once told me, your emotions follow your intent. If you create the intention of starting a comedy act, slowly your mind starts adjusting and you arrive at a new emotional state.

I ignored my stand-up career for twenty-five years, but now, having finished this memoir, I view this time with surprising warmth. One can have, it turns out, an affection for the war years.

Stand-up life is really hard. At one point, I got so paralyzed I could write five screenplays before I could write three jokes for stand-up. Later, I've finally allowed myself to relax quite a bit, to think I can do it because I've done it in the past. The pressure to come up with the material is the same but the anxiety about whether I can do it is gone.

she is nearing forty and not so easily forgiven as when her skin bloomed like roses.

I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.

You know that look that women get when they want to have sex? Me neither.

In talking to girls I could never remember the right sequence of things to say. I'd meet a girl and say, Hi, was it good for you too? If a girl spent the night, I'd wake up in the morning and then try to get her drunk.