“The stage sharpened my creative instrument and encouraged me to go deeper and try new things.”

At the end of the day, give up your worries and give thanks for the journey.

Live stage is being made as you go along. You feel the energy. There’s nothing like a live audience.

I go to my grandchildren. They keep their grandpa informed on what’s going on.

Sometimes we look for those thunderous things to happen in our life for our lives to change or go in the other direction. We seek the miracle. We seek the parting of the seas, the moving of the mountains. But no, its a quiet thing. At least for me it was.

If we plant the right seeds, tomorrow will be better. If you put out good things, then you’ll get good things back. That’s part of our responsibility as entertainers.

I didn’t know who Langston Hughes was till he met me backstage.

You’ve got to make haste while it’s still light of day. My godmother used to say, I don’t want to rust out, I just want to work out. If you stand still long enough, people will throw dirt on you.

Nine years after I had my own accident, I find that in trying to go back to doing those things that I used to do just doesn’t fit. Everything seems to just fall apart. I don’t know why but I think it is because I am this new creature.

Our creator says, ‘Here’s your birth and here’s your death’ – and the rest are the things you learn on your journey. This was my experience – and the choice is, I can lay in the misery, or choose to learn from it and move on.

The death of my daughter is a subject I talk about briefly because there is nothing more tragic.

So be encouraged and dedicate yourself to your dream and if your dream should come my way one day then we will dance upon the boards of life.

When people come and see my show, I try to infuse into them that they can walk away feeling like their lives are a victory.

I used to dance, but now I only move.

You’ve got to make haste while it’s still light of day.

I love sharing my story. It’s endlessly healing.

I want to show people what the possibilities are if you take care of yourself and do the right thing.

Stage and film are just two wildly different animals. Why compare the two?

Of all the roles I’ve done on the stage, I’m partial to Cyrano de Bergerac.

More than anything I love being on stage and performing

Even if you look good or you look bad, you still need to have all of those things to be on stage. You’re going to get criticized by everyone.

Yes, because when you’re in love, you are shy.

Some of these questions at this stage appear to be unanswerable in the light of present scientific knowledge.

On the stage you get the chance to do all that, to analyze and build a part, to react, to contribute something no one else can-not the author, not even the director.

A lot of us [comedians] are drawn to the stage or show business or whatever because we didn’t feel so great about ourselves, and we didn’t know how to do anything about that, so we sought external approval.