Occasionally, a finger comes up to wipe a tear [of laughter] from the eye... and that's my reward... the rest goes to the government.

And now, in honour of the 150th anniversary of Beethoven's death, I would like to play 'Clear the Saloon', er, 'Clair de Lune', by Debussy. I don't play Beethoven so well, but I play Debussy very badly, and Beethoven would have liked that.

My father invented a cure for which there was no disease and unfortunately my mother caught it and died of it.

If I have caused just one person to wipe away a tear of laughter, that's my reward.

They say that Nero started the fire himself because he needed a suitable backdrop for his concert.

Humor is something that thrives between man's aspirations and his limitations. There is more logic in humor than in anything else. Because, you see, humor is truth.

Laughter is the closest distance between two people.