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

One morning, I poured the apple juice into the specimen tube. The nurse held it up and said, ‘It’s a little cloudy.’ I took the tube from her and said, ‘Let me run it through again,’ and drank it. The nurse fainted.

When I read Dickens for the first time, I thought he was Jewish, because he wrote about oppression and bigotry, all the things that my father talked about.

I made it, Ma – Carnegie Hall. And I didn’t have to practice.

One thing I’ve never said in my whole life is, ‘Let’s have dinner at a Japanese restaurant.’

We watch society. As society behaves, then we have the ability to make fun of it.

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.

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.

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

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.