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.

Be undeniably good. When people ask me how do you make it in show business or whatever, what I always tell them & nobody ever takes note of it 'cause it's not the answer they wanted to hear-what they want to hear is here's how you get an agent, here's how you write a script, here's how you do this-but I always say, “Be so good they can't ignore you.” If somebody's thinking, “How can I be really good?” people are going to come to you. It's much easier doing it that way than going to cocktail parties.

I just believe that the interesting time in a career is pre-success, what shaped things, how did you get to this point.

It's spooky to look at yourself, because you are never quite what you think you are. And you are never as good looking as the person you are acting with, or something like that. So I learned to stay away from it because it was giving me more negative feelings than positive ones.

I thought yesterday was the first day of the rest of my life but it turns out today is.

There are some people that will not pick up a phone and call you, but if you knock on a door and talk to them, they'll talk back to you.

I'm not a human being. I'm despicable and disgusting - but that's where the money is.