“I feel sorry for the poor kids whose parents feel they’re qualified to teach them at home. Of course, some parents are smarter than some teachers, but in the main I see home-schooling as misguided foolishness.”

There should be three days a week when no one is allowed to say: ‘What’s your sign?’ Violators would have their copies of Kahlil Gibran confiscated.

Does anything show the complexity of the miraculous brain more than that weird curiosity, the sleep-protection dream?

I’m the only talk show host, I think, if there’s such a category in, what’s called, the book of records, to have a guest die while we were taping the show, yeah.

The information superhighway? That sounds like a place that’s long and boring and kills 50,000 people a year.

The greatest benefit of depression is the fact that when I have talked about it, every so often someone comes up and says, you saved my dad’s life.

The brain process that results in a joke materializing where no joke was before remains a mystery. I’m not aware of any scholarly, scientific or neurological studies on the subject.

An effective speaker can do more damage or more good in a well-stated minute than an angry klutz could do in half an hour.

William F. Buckley was a man who had a great capacity for fun and for amusing himself by amazing others.

It’s a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn’t want to hear.

Running my show is really like an actor being in repertory but where, in one day in one performance, you do scenes from a drama, a farce, a low comedy and a tragedy.

I guess the best advice I ever got or anyone could get for doing a talk show, though it has not been easy very often, was from Jack Paar, who said, ‘Kid, don’t make it an interview. Interviews have clipboards, and you’re like David Frost. Make it a conversation.’

Its fun for me to go on other folks talk shows. When youve endured the ups and downs and tensions and pitfalls of hosting, being a guest is a piece of angel food.

Every writer knows that unless you were born gifted with either supreme confidence or outsize ego, handing in your work holds, in some cases, admitted terror. If that’s too strong, at least fairly high anxiety.

You would have to be naive to think you can appear on television and not have the material edited in some way.

Meryl Streep belongs on anybody’s list of greats.

I’m not the guy with the enormous comedy nose or the big feet or the bad posture or the whatever; a physical comic has certain things.

I was a naughty kid. Teachers did not like me much.

From biscuit to brides, if there is anything their children really want, parents have a problem.

Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.

When I make commitments I like to stick to them, especially when I’m giving back to kids. Just giving them an example of what they can achieve. I love giving back to kids. It’s fantastic.

Ganesh Chaturti has always been one of my favourite festivals since I was a kid!

Giving birth is little more than a set of muscular contractions granting passage of a child. Then the mother is born.

In the black culture, certain kids are given nicknames that they roll with forever; the nicknames outweigh their real names. I’m one of those scenarios.

Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring, and integrity, they think of you.