“Marriage is nature’s way of keeping us from fighting with strangers.”

When I was a kid, my father used to tell me that everybody was celebrating my birthday. That’s what the trees are all about.

For me, that wasn’t such a joke, because my birthday was always around this time.

Then, of course, you’re hooked and you have to learn how to survive in the business.

Villains are a ball. People have been laughing at me for 50 years, so I love to sit in the back of the theater and listen to them hate me.

Let’s face it: It’s difficult enough to be funny without worrying about what is going to offend whom.

When I get up in the morning, I have to decide what I’m going to have for dinner or I can’t get through the day.

As a parent, I’d – I’d be a better father.

It’s more fun with someone who really likes it. I can’t imagine having a lasting friendship with anyone who is not interested in food.

I don’t mind being 65, but nobody is gonna tell me to come in at 5:30 to have the early bird special.

I didn’t know we were poor until I started giving interviews.

Now that’s better than sex, but only if the salami is thickly sliced.

I was a high school throw-out.

My favorite way to spend Saturday is in and out of bed, watching sports on TV and eating.

I just never saw my mother in any other room but the kitchen. There were always pots going.

My son says I never tell stories about anyone who’s living.

My mother’s sister was killed in a trolley car accident, so I was raised as one of eight with my sister and six male cousins.

No matter what you’re going through, it makes you forget about your problems. I think the world should keep laughing.

You gotta keep the ball off the fat part of the bat.

People need a sacred narrative. They must have a sense of larger purpose, in one form or another, however intellectualized. They will find a way to keep ancestral spirits alive.

You can’t keep your team together, and you are going to have more changes all the time. Personnel decisions aren’t always made by you, especially who you bring to your team.

On this team, we’re all united in a common goal: to keep my job.

When people have success, one of two things happen. They either get really satisfied and want to keep thinking about it and talking about what they did, or the success becomes a little addictive, and it makes them want to keep having more.

If they lose, then their life has somehow been diminished. I’m not that way, and it keeps me steady.

I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind – and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.