“The next time you have a thought… let it go.”

All of my comedian friends are some of the best joke writers in the world.

When I was 20, I used to go around telling stories, and I knew where I was comfortable – onstage, talking, making ’em laugh and listen to the weirdest things. I liked being the center of attention.

I’ve got a role in the new Billy Bob Thornton movie that Billy Bob wrote and is going to direct called ‘Jayne Mansfield’s Car.’ I only have four scenes, but I have as much dialogue as anybody in the movie.

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.

Our cellar home had a kitchen and a combination bedroom and half bath, which meant we had a sink next to the bed.

Staying in the moment is not worrying about the outcome but just focusing on the process on the next shot.

I prefer to focus on what is coming next and I am really looking forward to it.

I left Mainz after 18 years and thought, ‘Next time, I will work with a little less of my heart.’ I said that because we all cried for a week.

My whole family are hams. They’re storytellers and everyone outdoes the next one.

And when you don’t have to talk to the person next to you, that’s real clean. Takes a certain thing not to try to keep anything up, not to have to entertain one another.

The next war… may well bury Western civilization forever.

Time always seems long to the child who is waiting – for Christmas, for next summer, for becoming a grownup: long also when he surrenders his whole soul to each moment of a happy day.