When you're touring and if you go to a party, there's automatically a celebrity-audience distance. It follows you around, especially when you're on the road in small towns. Any time there is awe, it gets very difficult to be normal, to be yourself. But I'm not saying that that's what made me the way I am. I've probably always been distant.

I got a flue shot and now my chimney works perfectly.

When people ask me, ‘how do you make it in show business,’ or whatever, what I always tell them — and nobody ever takes note of it ‘cuz it’s not the answer they wanted to hear…but I always say, ‘Be so good they can’t ignore you.’

The banjo is such a happy instrument--you can't play a sad song on the banjo - it always comes out so cheerful.

Thankfully, persistence is a great substitute for talent.

I had loved magic tricks from the time I was six or seven. I bought books on magic. I did magic acts for my parents and their friends. I was aiming for show business from early days, and magic was the poor man's way of getting in: you buy a trick for $2, and you've got an act.

I was not self-destructive, though I almost destroyed myself. In the end, I turned away from stand-up with a tired swivel of my head...