It’s very interesting, the joke comes first and then the wording comes within five seconds, maybe ten seconds. My thing is to get the joke across in as few words as possible. However, sometimes a word that’s not really needed does help the rhythm of it. It’s a gut feeling.

Either he’s dead or my watch has stopped.

You know what, I’m very attracted to someone who makes me laugh and is that charming. Really, I could be charmed by anyone. I’m just a sucker for somebody that is charming.

Why do Jewish men die before their wives? They want to.

At Cornell University, my professor of European literature, Vladimir Nabokov, changed the way I read and the way I write. Words could paint pictures, I learned from him. Choosing the right word, and the right word order, he illustrated, could make an enormous difference in conveying an image or an idea.

Like getting into a bleeding competition with a blood bank.

You look like a talent scout for a cemetery.

I’ve been thinking of humorous things since I was… I can’t remember when. All the way through elementary school, all the way through junior high, all the way through high school, through college and after college, I was thinking of the same kinds of things that I say in front of an audience now.

This man is frank and earnest with women. In Fresno, he’s Frank and in Chicago he’s Ernest.

Ice-cream is exquisite – what a pity it isn’t illegal.

I do all my own stunts. I’m kidding.

How do you catch a knuckleball? You wait until it stops rolling, then go pick it up.

A lot of people think I’m a comedian.

There used to be an old bad joke. I hope it’s not so much a good joke anymore. ‚Everybody’s from Scranton; no one’s in Scranton.‘

Are you laboring under the impression that I read these memoranda of yours? I can’t even lift them.

There is nothing more miserable in the world than to arrive in paradise and look like your passport photo.

But, you know, it’s still a drag to get your picture taken when you’re eating a sandwich. It’s a downer.

If it’s a penny for your thoughts and you put in your two cents worth, then someone, somewhere is making a penny.

Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!

Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.

I am not gay, but if I were, I would be the first one running out of the closet.

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.

Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.

Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.

I feel lucky that I can have people laugh solidly for a whole hour by just saying what I think and getting paid for it.

I’m spending a year dead for tax reasons.

Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.

I’m a big believer than a great bit is a great bit – if I go and see someone I love, like Robert Klein. I want to hear some classics and some new stuff. But a great stand-up bit takes a long time to really polish and perfect, and they’re beautiful things when they’re done.

When I die, I’m leaving my body to science fiction.

I don’t need therapy. I’m not going to see a therapist; comedy acts as my therapy. I put my problems out there. I talk about them. I talk about everything before anybody has a chance.

Most of the stuff I do on the show comes out of me just trying to make my friends laugh.

A lot of truth is said in jest.

I’m comfortable in my own skin, no matter how far it’s stretched. Ha ha.

Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

My life has been one great big joke, a dance that’s walked a song that’s spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.

You know you’re getting old when you get that one candle on the cake. It’s like, ‚See if you can blow this out.‘

The only time my prayers are never answered is on the golf course.

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

What I like about the jokes, to me it’s a lot of logic, no matter how crazy they are. It has to make absolute sense, or it won’t be funny.

The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.

I don’t write material. Funny things happen to me in the course of a day, and I just make notes.

The two things in the world we all share in this world are laughter and pain. We’ve all got problems. The levels of those problems vary, but we’ve all got problems. When you can take things that are painful and make them funny, that’s a gift – to you and your audience.

I often look ridiculous in Japan. There’s really no way to eat in Japan, particularly kaiseki in a traditional ryokan, without offending the Japanese horribly. Every gesture, every movement is just so atrociously wrong, and the more I try, the more hilarious it is.

Trash talk? Smack talk? This is an American term that makes me laugh. I simply speak the truth. I’m an Irish man.

I wake up every morning at nine and grab for the morning paper. Then I look at the obituary page. If my name is not on it, I get up.

I grew up in a funny way.

Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.

I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol.

I sing and play the guitar, and I’m a walking, talking bacterial infection.

Humorists can never start to take themselves seriously. It’s literary suicide.

If I am not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don’t want to go there.

Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie… a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.

Politics is applesauce.

The right honourable gentleman caught the Whigs bathing, and walked away with their clothes. He has left them in the full enjoyment of their liberal positions, and he is himself a strict conservative of their garments.

There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?

Praise undeserved, is satire in disguise.

It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

I mean, families are weird.

Whenever a fellow tells me he’s bipartisan, I know he’s going to vote against me.