“A good laugh makes any interview, or any conversation, so much better.”

Children are God’s way of punishing us for having sex.

First of all, the Jewish religion has a great deal in common with the Christian religion because, as Rabbi Gillman points out in the show, Christianity is based on Judaism. Christ was Jewish.

The aging process seems to strike first at the mechanism which warns that we have been talking too much and the listener is growing restless. The signal isn’t perfect at any age – drink, for instance, throws it right out of kilter – but it is almost non-existent in old people.

The news media in general are liberal. If you want to be a reporter, you are going to see poverty and misery, and you have to be involved in the human condition.

I didn’t get ahead by sleeping with people. Girls, take heart!

To excel is to reach your own highest dream. But you must also help others, where and when you can, to reach theirs. Personal gain is empty if you do not feel you have positively touched another’s life.

I didn’t have a very religious family.

To feel valued, to know, even if only once in a while, that you can do a job well is an absolutely marvelous feeling.

It’s a fact that it is much more comfortable to be in the position of the person who has been offended than to be the unfortunate cause of it.

When you’re interviewing someone, you’re in control. When you’re being interviewed, you think you’re in control, but you’re not.

Most attractive males talk to most attractive women as if they were Rotarians comparing sales percentages in Des Moines.

But for Muslims, everything that they don’t have on earth is what they get in heaven. They can drink, they can have sex. All of the forbidden pleasures on earth, you can have in paradise.

Celebrities used to be found in clusters, like oysters – and with much the same defensive mechanisms.

I first interviewed Fidel Castro 39 years ago. He was charming and fiercely guarded about his private life. He called our interviews ‘fiery debates.’ During our times together, he made clear to me that he was an absolute dictator and that he was a staunch opponent of democracy.

A job is not a career. I think I started out with a job. It turned into a career and changed my life.

For a man who likes to talk, Fidel Castro does very few interviews.

After I ran off the mound, I looked over at the St. Louis dugout. There were players rolling around on the floor, laughing. Poor Terry. I’ll have to admit that was a hell of a curveball.

It’s not terribly dignified to have anyone seeing one laugh at one’s own material.

Making people laugh is what I’ve been doing since I was like four or five years old. I still have a lust, I still have a passion. I don’t care about how I look, I’m dedicated to the laughs.

I don’t care about how I look; I’m dedicated to the laughs. You know, I used to be a clown, so – my name was Smoothie the Clown. All the training I had, all my training is geared toward making people laugh, and I didn’t care about being cool.

I remember laughing when we made those slogans up [about abortion]. . . .

If I can tell someone a story that makes them bend over and laugh, that’s bigger than anything else.

It’s great to work with the people who make you laugh and who are funnier than I am.

Well, it’s a lot less dangerous – working with snakes and mountaibn lions and dangerous animals – than working in Hollywood [laughs]. Hollwood will kill you.