Hear the birds? Sometimes I like to pretend that I’m deaf and I try to imagine what it’s like not to be able to hear them. It’s not that bad.

I just feed off the energy of the audience.

Women love a self-confident bald man.

Until I started doing standup, there were some very bleak days.

When I was living in New York and didn’t have a penny to my name, I would walk around the streets and occasionally I would see an alcove or something. And I’d think, that’ll be good, that’ll be a good spot for me when I’m homeless.

I learned the first night that IHOP’s not the place to order fish.

Switzerland is a place where they don’t like to fight, so they get people to do their fighting for them while they ski and eat chocolate.

It’s that I wasn’t suited to do the kind of comedy that these people were coming to hear – mainstream comedy.

It began to dawn on me that perhaps my country needed me more at home than overseas.

Every relationship is just so tenuous and precarious.

In those days, reserve duty lasted for six years, which, I might add, was three times as long as service in the regular army, although to be perfectly honest, I was unable to fulfill my entire obligation because I was taking acting classes and they said I could skip my last year.

Even back then, I exuded self-confidence, and that drives women crazy.

There are times when I’m driving home after a day’s shooting, thinking to myself, That scene would’ve been so much better if I had written it out.

And eventually as I kept writing it, something emerged that was not quite me but a version of me.

Sure, being a reservist wasn’t as glamorous, but I was the one who had to look at myself in the mirror.

I don’t think anyone really is interested in reading about my emotional state. It’s not even interesting to me.

I guess I still feel that I’m a comedian; if I had to pick one thing that I feel like I could do, it would be that. That doesn’t mean that I like it, but I feel that’s what I am.

Hey, I may loathe myself, but it has nothing to do with the fact that I’m Jewish.

Millions of people are married. I’ve never picked up a paper and seen a headline that says, Man Gets Married!

I’m really only happy when I’m on stage. I just feed off the energy of the audience. That’s what I’m all about – people and laughter.

Trying on pants is one of the most humiliating things a man can suffer that doesn’t involve a woman.

Well, as you know, I’m really only happy when I’m on stage.

The only change I can really see is that I don’t have to shop for pants in stores anymore.

You write about what you know.

Most of the time I’m thinking, I’m glad that scene was improvised.

Drugs scared me.

I had a job as a paralegal. I drove a cab.

It’s not every day that you get to be affectionate around something, it just doesn’t happen that often.

If you tell the truth about how you’re feeling, it becomes funny.

I couldn’t be happier that President Bush has stood up for having served in the National Guard, because I can finally put an end to all those who questioned my motives for enlisting in the Army Reserve at the height of the Vietnam War.

I’ve led this empty life for over forty years and now I can pass that heritage on and ensure that the misery will continue for at least one more generation.

Actually I walk around with the Emmy wherever I go, but I’m very casual about it.

I tell people that I’ve now done one decent thing in my life. Albeit inadvertently.

Even though the National Guard and Army Reserve see combat today, it rankles me that people assume it was some kind of waltz in the park back then.

I wanted to make a living, but I really was not interested in money at all. I was interested in being a great comedian.

I was very fortunate to hook up with Jerry in the first place. The network was already committed to doing something with him, so I skipped a couple of hundred steps right there.

When you’re not concerned with succeeding, you can work with complete freedom.

I think that for the most part, when I started doing comedy, it had become very commercialized.

At first, I didn’t realize it was gonna be a character. I just thought I was gonna be doing me.

Hear the birds? Sometimes I like to pretend that I’m deaf and I try to imagine what it’s like not to be able to hear them. It’s not that bad.

I’m a walking, talking enigma.

It has to do – I think – with growing up in an apartment, with my aunt and my cousins right next door to me, with the door open, with neighbors walking in and out, with people yelling at each other all the time.

There’s a sense of spontaneity, and no emphasis on jokes in this show. People generally talk the way they talk in life if you were in this particular situation.

Anyone can be confident with a full head of hair. But a confident bald man – there’s your diamond in the rough.

I was planning on my future as a homeless person. I had a really good spot picked out.

I just wanted laughs – that’s really what I was after.