He looks and talks like he just fell off Edgar Bergen's lap. [on Gerald Ford]

I used to have a theory actually that, if you've had a good childhood, a good marriage and a little bit of money in the bank, you're going to make a lousy comedian.

My father was a rabbi and had a little synagogue in Canada, so I'm from Canada. I left there at 16.

I starred in a Broadway play that was Sidney Poitier's first directing job and the cast was Lou Gossett, Cicely Tyson, Diana Ladd and I played a Jewish kid who offered himself as a slave to two Columbia University students as reparations.

The odd thing about comedy is that the more personal you are, the larger the audience.

The one thing an audience always has in common with a comedian is troubles. The Yiddish word for that is tsuris. You're always putting your tsuris on stage whether you like it or not. No one is untroubled, unless they're just, you know, an imbecile.