For some reason, comedians are still children. The social skills somehow never reach us, so we say exactly what we think without weighing the results.

If you look at Jack Benny, George Burns, or Don Rickles, they've all had long, successful marriages. So, I think there's something about laughter and the durability of a marriage.

With the advent of cell phones, especially with the very small microphone that attach to the cell phone itself, it's getting harder and harder I find, to differentiate between schizophrenics and people talking on a cell phone.

The best advice I was probably given and the best advice I could give someone who is trying to get into the comedy field is to take advantage of every opportunity you have to work to hone your skills.

Probably the best advice I ever got in my life was from the head of the accounting department, Mr. Hutchinson, I believe at the Glidden Company in Chicago, and he told me, 'You really aren't cut out for accounting.'

Humor is so important to the American scene throughout history.

I'm not what you'd call a Method actor.

I have an aversion to laugh tracks - the moment I hear a laugh track, I go to another channel.

When I first started out, 'Time' magazine did an article on what it called 'the sick comics,' and they were myself, Shelley Berman, Nichols & May, Jonathan Winters, Lenny Bruce, and Mort Sahl. We were considered 'sick.'

I remember seeing a movie with Jose Ferrer and Rosemary Clooney where they were husband and wife, and they got in bed, and he had on polka-dot pajamas and she had on striped pajamas, and when they got up the next morning he had on the striped pajamas and she had the polka dot pajamas, and that was considered racy at that time!

I loved 'Everybody Loves Raymond' because I like Ray and I thought it was beautifully cast, I thought it was great writing. I thought Patricia Heaton was wonderful.

I was an accountant in Chicago, and a friend of mine, Ed Gallagher, was in advertising. At 4:30 every day I'd be bored, and I would call him. He'd interview me.

I can't do a one-camera show. I don't know how to do that kind of show where you count in your head and then you do the next line.

Dick Martin, if you put a gun to his forehead, he couldn't tell you a joke.

I found the most difficult thing when you became successful - when I had the record album, it won Album of the Year - that you were cut off from the source of your material. Your material was everyday people, and you were kind of cut off from that, and you had to work at it.

I left 'The Bob Newhart Show,' which was my decision. CBS wanted it to go on. But I could see television changing; I could see the tastes were changing.

'The Mary Tyler Moore Show' was the best television, the best cast, the best-written television show ever.

People are meant to be certain places, and I think I'm meant to be on a sound stage doing situation comedy.

I always hated when the studios just kind of said that anybody can act. You look at people like Spencer Tracy, Henry Fonda - and I'm just talking about the male actors - there aren't a lot who can act. It's a very special talent, and I wish it were recognized as a very special talent.

I would say I came from upper middle class family.

If 'The New York Times' says it, it must be true.

Mark Twain gave us an insight into the life on the Mississippi at the turn of the century.

The highest of highs is to have a new routine that you're just breaking in and that's working, and that's - you're one step removed doing a situation comedy because you have a live audience there.

I just don't think most people put myself and Robert Frost in the same category.