If I ever had twins, I’d use one for parts.

He that raises a large family does, indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too.

My luck is getting worse and worse. Last night, for instance, I was mugged by a quaker.

These days, children can text on their cell phone all night long, and no one else is seeing that phone. You don’t know who is calling that child.

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

As a father, I always want my son to be perfect. When he was young, I tried to train him in martial arts, but he said, ‚I don’t want to become like Bruce Lee’s son, with everybody telling me how good my father was.‘ I just think my son is too lazy.

My greatest blessing has been the birth of my son. My next greatest blessing has been my ability to turn people into children of mine.

Humor is reason gone mad.

That is why, no matter how desperate the predicament is, I am always very much in earnest about clutching my cane, straightening my derby hat and fixing my tie, even though I have just landed on my head.

But I was the most unashamed lone parent you were ever going to meet.

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 once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.

A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.

By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man’s, I mean.

Is it weird in here, or is it just me?

I feel like I’m the kind of guy that would have kids before getting married. The first thing would be kids.

I never even thought of myself as deadpan until someone wrote an article about me about a year after I was doing comedy. There was a paper called the ‚Boston Phoenix,‘ and someone wrote a description of what I was doing and that’s where I first saw ‚deadpan.‘

The childcare tax credit makes some sense.

My mom’s one of 13 siblings, and they all got six kids, and till I was 13 everybody was in Compton.

I have never developed indigestion from eating my words.

Children make your life important.

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

How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn’t make it a leg.

It wasn’t so long ago that I was a working mom myself. And I know that sometimes, much as we all hate to admit it, it’s just easier to park the kids in front of the TV for a few hours, so we can pay the bills or do the laundry or just have some peace and quiet for a change.

The deep, personal material of the latter half of your life is your children. You can write about your parents when they’re gone, but your children are still going to be here, and you’re going to want them to come and visit you in the nursing home.

I had a friend who was a clown. When he died, all his friends went to the funeral in one car.

I would like to fly in space. Absolutely. That would be cool. I used to just do personally risky things, but now I’ve got kids and responsibilities, so I can’t be my own test pilot. That wouldn’t be a good idea. But I definitely want to fly as soon as it’s a sensible thing to do.

People who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.

Comedians are sociologists. We’re pointing out stuff that the general public doesn’t even stop to think about, looking at life in slow-motion and questioning everything we see.

My success comes in making fun of whatever you’re doing. That’s my way.

For me, often, there’s such a cloud of melancholia about knowing I’m going to have to leave my daughter on her own. I don’t know what age that is going to be, thank God. It just doubles me up in grief.

Who will take responsibility for raising the next generation?

People change because of kids. They change how they eat. They change the way they think. They change the way they see one another.

I want my kids to see me as Dad, for God’s sake, not a television personality.

Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.

We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him.

The funny thing is people won’t let me pay for things. I’ll be in a restaurant and the manager will say, ‚Oh no, it’s on the house.‘

A dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.

If you spend your life competing with business men, what do you have? A bank account and ulcers!

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They came through you but not from you and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

While I believed deeply in my husband’s vision for this country… and I was certain he would make an extraordinary President… like any mother, I was worried about what it would mean for our girls if he got that chance. How would we keep them grounded under the glare of the national spotlight?

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.

For an Ethiopian mother, if you have a chubby kid, it means you’re doing something good.

The other day I… uh, no, that wasn’t me.

A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

There’s one way to find out if a man is honest – ask him. If he says, ‚Yes,‘ you know he is a crook.

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.

The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation, that those whom he injures are always in his sight.

My kids always perceived the bathroom as a place where you wait it out until all the groceries are unloaded from the car.

What I have never been afraid of is to be a little silly, and you can engage people that way. My view is, first you get them to laugh, then you get them to listen.

I think that, ah, I’m a very goofy sort of person in many ways.

A lot of truth is said in jest.

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’s only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn what it is I’ll get married again.

We were at a beach one summer, and I had a bathing suit on. My wife looked at me and said: ‚Boy, you are skinny, aren’t you?‘ I said: ‚Honey, I’d like to remind you that it was minor defects like this that kept me from getting a better wife.‘

I’ve exercised with women so thin that buzzards followed them to their cars.

A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

I don’t believe in the after life, although I am bringing a change of underwear.

Never accept a drink from a urologist.

You know, my main reaction to this money thing is that it’s humorous, all the attention to it, because it’s hardly the most insightful or valuable thing that’s happened to me.

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.