“I’m not freakishly short. I had, on my show, used shortness as a joke subject; it didn’t really bother me.”

I get a kick out of people saying I was funny.

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.

Home schooling as an idea is on a par with home dentistry.

It was well after college that I learned about depression. I got my first job for Jack Paar. I realized I was sleeping 14 hours a day and just living for the Paar show.

Every time I nostalgically try to regain my liking of John McCain, he reaches into his sleaze bag and pulls out something malodorous.

My IQ is somewhere between Spiro Agnew’s and Albert Einstein’s.

To call New York’s traffic at holiday time a nightmare is to understate.

There were several things a Yale freshman was supposed to be able to do. You had to demonstrate in the Olympic-size Yale pool that you could swim 50 yards or be inducted into swimming class.

History is not reassuring on the subject of the longevity of seemingly lasting great nations, is it?

I eat at this German-Chinese restaurant and the food is delicious. The only problem is that an hour later you’re hungry for power.

If your parents never had children, chances are neither will you.

I confess, I do have to remind myself almost daily that there are people on this earth capable of reading, writing, eating and dressing themselves who believe their lives are ruled from billions of miles away, by the stars – and, of course, the planets.

I think I’d be pretty easy to write for.

Lawyers work hard and, like us, they’re human, many of them.

When I’m doing an appearance somewhere and taking questions from the audience, I can always count on: ‘Tell about the guy who died on your show!’

The emotions in all true anxiety dreams are next to unbearable.

I live on a ranch in Texas and do my own thing. And I don’t care what anyone has to say about it. My joke is that the only people I’m trying to please are myself and my fans, because they’re the ones buying my records. And I have the best, most loyal fan base ever.

You name any horrific thing, and I can make a joke out of it.

It is not a sin to be seventy but it is also no joke.

I am a person. I am not a soap opera. There is never going to be a next [tabloid] installment about my life because my own stuff is my own stuff.

There was always another side to a joke, the side of the victim.

Many a truth is told in jest.

Do not mock a pain you have not endured.

I always told everybody the perfect joke would be where the setup and punch line were identical.