“The only way to stay sharp is to do live shows. There is no part-time comedy.”

I love Cincinnati, but you can keep that spaghetti chili product!

I believe that if life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade… And try to find somebody whose life has given them vodka, and have a party.

I was considered by my peers to be a good comedian. So that’s all I ever strived to do was get some recognition from my peers.

The first thing I ever got my hands on was Andy Griffith’s ‘What It Was, Was Football.’ I was fascinated with the fact that every syllable made it funny, and I would laugh even though I didn’t know what any of it meant.

I’m definitely guilty of thinking something is funny but thinking the audience won’t. Then three years later I will finally try it and it’ll kill them. I got to give them more credit.

I would have rather been beat by a plumber than Kathy Griffin.

I begged the universe to make me a famous comedian, and it did. So I tend not to ask for any more.

I still love to walk on stage and make people laugh, and I work very, very hard at it, and I take it seriously.

I believe that a bad Super Bowl halftime show is still better than a soccer game.

Anything I write that I consider stage-quality work, I won’t give my TV show. I put it in my live show.

The bulk of my fans are my age, and I’m aging at the same rate they are. That makes me relevant. They like hearing what I have to say. I work hard at it, but it’s addicting, really.

There are two kinds of comics; there are the ones who build bridges, and then there are the people who walk across the bridges as though they built them. The bridge builders are few and far between.

It went from Bob Newhart to Flip Wilson to Bill Cosby to Richard Pryor to George Carlin to Cheech and Chong. I had all these records.

It never dawned on me that I had the option of becoming a comedian. I come from a little dirt street town in northwest Texas, and they really don’t talk about the arts there much on career day.

There were years when I was a beer and tequila guy, then I got real fat. And then I found that you could actually go on a diet and drink scotch. Then I got hooked on scotch, and if you get hooked on scotch, then everything else just tastes wrong.

I always found that the closer I got to who I really am, on stage, the more they responded to it.

I pray before I go into the operating room for every case, and I ask him to give me wisdom, to help me to know what to do – and not only for operating, but for everything.

The only people benefiting from the status quo in immigration [in the USA] today are the people trafficking human beings across the border, and the people who are hiring illegal labor for cheap purposes.

The key is never, never work. Nothing is more aging than work. It’s not only the strain of getting up in the morning for work, but it’s the resentment that settles on your face

The safe places could only be visited; they could only grant a momentary intuition of sanctuary. The moment always came when we had to return to our real life to face the wounds and grief indigenous to our homr by the river.

It’s simple arithmetic: “Your income can grow only to the extent you do.”

This is the only country in the world where today’s employee, is tomorrow’s employer.

Both of my parents were born into poor families on the island of Cuba. They came to America because it was the only place where people like them could have a chance.

There have been only 268 of the past 3,421 years free of war.