Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year. And then discover once a year is way too often.
Happiness is seeing your son drafted the same day he’s been accepted to an expensive college.
Happiness is having a rare steak, a bottle of whiskey, and a dog to eat the rare steak.
Democracy is buying a big house you can’t afford with money you don’t have to impress people you wish were dead.
I heard from my cat’s lawyer today; my cat wants $12,000 a week for Tender Vittles.
Married men live longer than single men. But married men are a lot more willing to die.
When a comic becomes enamored with his own views and foists them off on the public in a polemic way, he loses not only his sense of humor but his value as a humorist.
I work because I enjoy what I’m doing, and the fact that I make money at it – big money – is a fine-and-dandy side fact.
We resort, frankly, to pies, which is a comedy staple that’s gone back, I guess, to since the first pie was ever baked.
The worst gift is a fruitcake. There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other.
I don’t run with anybody’s herd. I don’t like crowds. I don’t like going to fancy places. I don’t like the whole nightclub scene. Cocktail parties drive me mad. So I do my job and I stay away from the rest of it.
I wouldn’t have the slightest interest in running for public office. I’d rather make jokes about politicians than become one of them.
Only lie about the future.
There’s only one critic whose opinion I really value, in the final analysis: Johnny Carson. I have never needed any entourage standing around bolstering my ego. I’m secure. I know exactly who and what I am. I don’t need to be told. I make no apologies for being the way I am.
How much of the national news that you report to the public each night consists of information you’ve actually gone out and dug up on your own?
As for being sociable, I hate the phoniness in the showbiz world. I know this will be taken wrong, but I don’t like clubs and organizations. I was never a joiner.
Audiences have proved time and again that they don’t want a steady diet of any entertainer airing his social views – especially if he’s a comedian.
Whatever you do, you’re going to be criticized.
Happiness is discovering the prune juice your doctor ordered you to drink has fermented.
I’ve worked ever since I was a kid with a two-bit kit of magic tricks trying to improve my skills at entertaining whatever public I had – and to make myself ready, whenever the breaks came, to entertain a wider and more demanding public.