To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it!

In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

Don’t sweat the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things.

The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy.

The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.

I cry so much less than I used to. I used to be one of the most teary people.

Memories are thoughts that arise. They’re not realities. Only when you believe that they are real, then they have the power over you. But when you realize it’s just another thought arising about the past, then you can have a spacious relationship with that thought. The thought no longer has you in its grip.

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

Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds, they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material.

Exercise is really important to me – it’s therapeutic. So if I’m ever feeling tense or stressed or like I’m about to have a meltdown, I’ll put on my iPod and head to the gym or out on a bike ride along Lake Michigan with the girls.

It’s fun to be hopelessly in love. It’s dangerous, but it’s fun.

I’m looking for backing for an unauthorized auto-biography that I am writing. Hopefully, this will sell in such huge numbers that I will be able to sue myself for an extraordinary amount of money and finance the film version in which I will play everybody.

Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.

Hear reason, or she’ll make you feel her.

Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food to the body.

A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.

One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling.

Silence speaks so much louder than screaming tantrums. Never give anyone an excuse to say that you’re crazy.

After the first day of practice, there’s not one guy who’s playing at 100 percent or who feels great. Sometimes, getting up in the morning and brushing your teeth is the hardest part of the day – it just hurts.

I laugh all the time – at things, people, stuff, whatever. But, I don’t laugh onstage because then it’s serious business.

A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world.

From there to here, and here to there, funny things are everywhere.

The deferring of anger is the best antidote to anger.

People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.

The mind of America is seized by a fatal dry rot – and it’s only a question of time before all that the mind controls will run amuck in a frenzy of stupid, impotent fear.

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

MySpace is my wife… Facebook is my mistress.

I think that’s why I put my energy into making music. That’s how I get my thoughts out, instead of being crazy all the time.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

Babies don’t need a vacation, but I still see them at the beach… it pisses me off! I’ll go over to a little baby and say ‚What are you doing here? You haven’t worked a day in your life!‘

I don’t feel that I’m explaining the world or teaching people anything. And I’m not trying to be a mirror, showing them what’s really going on the world. All I’m trying to do is think of stuff that’s funny, just like when I’m kidding around with my friends.

They say marriages are made in Heaven. But so is thunder and lightning.

William Maxwell’s my favorite North American writer, I think. And an Irish writer who used to write for ‚The New Yorker‘ called Maeve Brennan, and Mary Lavin, another Irish writer. There were a lot of writers that I found in ‚The New Yorker‘ in the Fifties who wrote about the same type of material I did – about emotions and places.

I try to be funny and not ignorant.

Do not laugh much or often or unrestrainedly.

But for my faith in God, I should have been a raving maniac.

You can draw inspiration from anything. If you’re a good storyteller, you can take a dirty look somebody gives you, or if a guy you used to have flirtations with starts dating a new girl, or somebody you’re casually talking to says something that makes you so mad – you can create an entire scenario around that.

There’s nothing funnier than the human animal.

Morning without you is a dwindled dawn.

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

There are strings in the human heart that had better not be vibrated.

Everyone has been in love, at some point or another.

To a guy like me, a laugh is full of information.

Cycling is a joy and faster than many other modes of transport, depending on the time of day. It clears the head.

There’s a scripture that says, ‚A merry heart doeth good like medicine.‘ I think that’s true, too.

I’m not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb… and I also know that I’m not blonde.

Most people would rather give than get affection.

Whenever I say I made a record in the garage, people just assume that I have, like, a Lear jet parked in there or something. But really there’s old luggage, a couple of bikes. It’s big enough to put one minivan in. That’s it. No dartboard. I’m so not macho.

The book, ’12 Rules For Life,‘ is a very serious book. There’s elements of humor in it, but I’m trying to struggle with things at the deepest possible level and to explain to people why it’s necessary to live a upstanding and noble and moral and truthful and responsible life, and why there’s hell to pay if you don’t do that.

I must confess that I lead a miserable life. For almost two years, I have ceased to attend any social functions, just because I find it impossible to say to people, ‚I am deaf.‘ If I had any other profession, I might be able to cope with my infirmity; but in my profession, it is a terrible handicap.

Drunkenness is temporary suicide.

I don’t think there’s an option for me to fall in love slowly or at medium speed. I either do, or I don’t.

It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it.

I can’t consciously explain how people feel after reading my books. All is too personal.

I am odd-looking. I sometimes think I look like a funny Muppet.

They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice… that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.

When you look at me, when you think of me, I am in paradise.

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.

Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there’s time, the Bastard Time.

I don’t know who I touch and who I don’t. I work hard trying to make people laugh. I try to do the kind of stuff that made me laugh growing up. I don’t have any secrets. I don’t know the reasons I’ve been so well received.

I do all my own stunts. I’m kidding.