Laughter gives us distance. It allows us to step back from an event, deal with it and then move on.
I think you should be a child for as long as you can. I have been successful for 74 years being able to do that. Don’t rush into adulthood, it isn’t all that much fun.
I still feel thirty, except when I try to run.
It’s getting harder and harder to differentiate between schizophrenics and people talking on a cell phone. It still brings me up short to walk by somebody who appears to be talking to themselves.
Marriage and fatherhood heighten the disillusion that we all think we are born handy. We confidently believe that we can fix things around the house, as if it’s part of the collective brain that was further enhanced by eighth-grade shop class.
I was influenced by every comedian I ever saw work. That’s the only way you learn how to do it.
I am a minimalist. I like saying the most with the least.
But I really believe that if you have the ability, there is an obligation to make people laugh.
I wasn’t much good. When I went into the line on a fake – I would holler ‘I don’t have it!’
Sometimes you forget you’re famous. You wonder, Why is that person staring at me?
I think that what comes through in Chicago humor is the affection. Even though youre poking fun at someone or something, theres still an affection for it.
I was never a Certified Public Accountant. I just had a degree in accounting. It would require passing a test, which I would not have been able to do.
All I can say about life is, ‘Oh God, enjoy it!’
Humor’s a weapon if you want to make it one.
I’m most proud of the longevity of my marriage, my kids, and my grandchildren. If you don’t have that, you really don’t have very much.
It was a decision to work clean. I just prefer to work that way. I have no problem with comedians who don’t work that way. There was a temptation in the early ’70s to reconsider. I decided against it.
I think there are still words you can’t use in family entertainment that you can use in a sitcom today.
Funny is funny is funny.
I worked in accounting for two and a half years, realized that wasn’t what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, and decided I was just going to give comedy a try.