“My father was a dreamer – my hero. He was a smart, tough guy from Poland, a cutter of lady’s handbags.”

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.

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.

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.

It’s more and more difficult to get through to your audience with all of the clutter. This is a great way for Ace to get [its] message out.

And, in the future, while the dumb show of bohemianism plays itself out in the cookie cutter shape of the politically correct martyr/victim, aesthetic terrorists will not involve themselves in the dubious rewards of celebrity.