“There are many self-help books by Ph.D.s, but I hold a different degree: an I.B.T.I.A.-I’ve Been Through It All. This degree comes not on parchment but gauze, and it entitles me to tell you that there is a way to get through any misfortune.”

I was so ugly that my parents sent my picture to ‘ripley’s believe it or not’ – they sent it back and said, “we don’t believe it.”

Thank God we’re living in a country where the sky’s the limit, the stores are open late and you can shop in bed thanks to television.

If you don’t want gays in the military, make the uniforms ugly.

On her daughter Melissa: The only time she really cried is when I sat her down and told her that she was not adopted.

A man can sleep around, no questions asked, but if a woman makes nineteen or twenty mistakes she’s a tramp.

I wish I could tell you it gets better. It doesn’t get better. You get better.

Life goes by fast. Enjoy it…Everyone gets so upset about the wrong things.

Better laid than never.

We all mourn in our own way. I mourn with a great steak.

Life is a movie, and you’re the star. Give it a happy ending.

In life the only thing that you can expect is the unexpected; the only surprise is a day that has none.

A female salmon lays three thousand eggs a year – and has yet to receive a Mother’s Day card from one of them.

I said Justin Bieber looked like a little lesbian — and I stand by it: He’s the daughter Cher wishes she’d had.

Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I believe when a woman enters a room, men should stand up – and gay men should stand up at least halfway.

I have a million dollar figure but it’s all loose change.

Old age is always ten years more than we are.

The biggest seller is cookbooks and the second is diet books – how not to eat what you’ve just learned how to cook.

Mary is the Mysterious Book of Predestination to glory.

While other kids were out playing and doing healthy things, I read an ancient judo book with a neck hold that was fatal to so many people they finally dropped it from judo.

I would not ever try to be a show intellectual, which I was accused of doing a while on ABC. I thought you were supposed to read the guests’ books.

We do not consider our principles as dogmas contained in books that are said to come from heaven. We derive our inspiration, not from heaven, or from an unseen world, but directly from life.

I was reading Neil Postman’s ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’. It’s one of my favourites.

A biggest mistake I made when I started doing a talk show was I thought you had to read the books.

A good book is an event in my life.