“I’ve asked these guys in rock bands with all the 18-wheelers driving to the venue how they make money. I just don’t understand it. But I don’t understand a lot of things.”

Comedy is great because there’s no overhead.

I go through about 140 cities a year.

My brain is like a cross between a colander and a Lazy Susan – thin, slow, and it leaks.

I didn’t get where I am today by worryin’ about how I’d feel tomorrow.

I could do no wrong in my mother’s eyes from the day I was born. My fans bought her a very nice house in San Antonio, and she has a great life.

I’ve never been one to look up the ladder. I’ve always looked down the ladder. As long as there’s one guy down there, I’m fine.

I’ve been married a few times. I’m not good at it.

If you become famous and don’t have a live show to back it up, they’re not going to pay you any money.

I don’t know who in my family thinks very fast at all, including me. The things that people see me do onstage are written, so it doesn’t have to be very quick if you have all day with a pen.

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

You can teach somebody how to be a brain surgeon, but you cannot teach them how to walk on a stage and make people laugh.

When I was about 12 years old back in Houston, my Dad used to take us to the driving range.

I do live like a rock star, but it’s not as great as it sounds. It’s a lot of traveling.

I have a very fun life. I don’t recommend it for anybody else, but it sure has been fun for me.

My favorite bands are the Allman Brothers and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

We always go out looking for live music after our shows.

There is nothing in art, in philosophy, or in politics to match the fervor of mutual cooperation among discordant bands of fanatics.

But the live band is now becoming ancient history in Thailand, Cambodia, and Burma.

And there are places on the border, such as the Arizona desert or the open terrain around the Big Bend in South Texas, where Mother Nature has created her own barrier that is not easily passable. Or if you do pass through it, you are easily detected.

Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored.

Buy our album, were Nirvana, a garage band from Seattle. Well, it sure beats raising cattle.

One of my pet peeves is that sometimes the talents of my band get overlooked because, and it was the same problem that Frank Zappa had, with a lot of groups that use humor, people don’t realize there’s a lot of craft behind the comedy.

I’ve been saying for almost 20 years that I need to do a jazz project and it ought to be either big band or I should do some jazz songs with a trio or quartet.

THE LAW OF THE CONTRACTION: A brand becomes stronger when you narrow its focus.