When you first start out with something new, you're always a little uptight.

The man I adored, and miss him terribly, was Johnny Carson.

I was 28 when my father died, and I was an only child.

I've never had a written script.

Sinatra was somebody special.

I've been to Philadelphia a lot of times over the years, playing the old Celebrity Room and most of the other clubs around there that don't exist anymore.

If something strikes me as funny, I'll put it in my performance.

My wife, Barbara, is great. She arranges when I do work that I have a day off between performances.

I call myself an actor. I always wanted to be one.

My father was an insurance man and a small-time gambler. He was a good man, but he had an eye for the racehorses, and I saw how it used to bother my mother. I've never gambled a dime. Never, in all those years in Vegas.

When I got out of high school, I wanted to be an actor but was getting a lot of rejections. I was getting rejected by life. My mother, God rest her soul, told me not to quit.

I was always the guy - out of insecurities, I was always making fun, even as a kid.

To me, the stand up part in my life is great. I know I can do that. When I get an acting chance, I'm really thrilled.

I cannot tell a joke. But I can do a situation, that it becomes a joke.

I told jokes badly.

I mean, in my - and I'm not trying to do spilled milk, but in those days it was a little - I think it was much tougher, because you got an image, and you were in a saloon. And it was tough to come out of a saloon and to get in films, and to maintain an image, you know.

I do situations and make fun of authority and life.

I was a mother's boy.

When I'm onstage, I'm acting.

Well, I call myself an actor. I always wanted to be one.

To my knowledge, I was the first guy really to do what I do. And then later on different comedians started trying doing it.

I never went out looking for glory.

I enjoy mixed audiences, not one particular group. Short, tall, scientists, Jews, gentiles, whatever, as long as they breathe and like to laugh.

Yeah, I make fun of blacks, and why not? I'm not a black.