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.

You might be the funniest guy in the world, but if you don’t have anything to talk about, people are eventually going to gravitate towards the guy that’s actually saying something.

A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.

The difference between a misfortune and a calamity is this: If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, that would be a calamity.

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

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.

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.

With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.

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

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.

There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.

You make ‚em, I amuse ‚em.

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.

A friend of mine jokes that I have a painstaking royalty complex. Like maybe I was a duke in a past life.

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

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.

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.

My son is becoming me – just a silly, silly prankster guy.

Before marriage, a girl has to make love to a man to hold him. After marriage, she has to hold him to make love to him.

I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.

I went down the street to the 24-hour grocery. When I got there, the guy was locking the front door. I said, ‚Hey, the sign says you’re open 24 hours.‘ He said, ‚Yes, but not in a row.‘

There’s many a man has more hair than wit.

I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.

I didn’t start sweating until I had children. That was one of the first things I realized when my daughter Violet was born – I started getting wicked BO. You know there’s a difference between basketball BO and stress BO? This was definitely stress BO. Like, new dad BO.

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.

Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.

A person who can’t pay gets another person who can’t pay to guarantee that he can pay. Like a person with two wooden legs getting another person with two wooden legs to guarantee that he has got two natural legs. It don’t make either of them able to do a walking-match.

God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.

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

I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.

I don’t go off and sit down and try to write material, because then it’s contrived and forced. I just live my life, and I see things in a word or a situation or a concept, and it will create a joke for me.

I’m half-Irish, half-Dutch, and I was born in Belgium. If I was a dog, I’d be in a hell of a mess!

I’m not a serious person, and I don’t like serious people.

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

Only two things are necessary to keep one’s wife happy. One is to let her think she is having her own way, and the other is to let her have it.

When the burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy, I always remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor.

Whenever I want to laugh, I read a wonderful book, ‚Children’s Letters to God.‘ You can open it anywhere. One I read recently said, ‚Dear God, thank you for the baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy.‘

I make fun of situations and try and find the humor in things, but it’s never at the expense of the other guy.

So, I’m lying on the couch and Laura walks in and I say, ‚Free at last,‘ and she says ‚You’re free all right, you’re free to do the dishes.‘ So I say, ‚You’re talking to the former president, baby,‘ and she said, ‚consider this your new domestic policy agenda.‘

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.

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.‘

If you make any money, the government shoves you in the creek once a year with it in your pockets, and all that don’t get wet you can keep.

The thing that I fear discriminating against is humor and truth.

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.

Believe it or not, I make myself laugh. Sometimes when I have thoughts or say some things that are funny, it just makes me laugh, and I don’t mind laughing at it before you guys do.

I have no desire to crow over anybody or to see anybody eating crow, figuratively or otherwise. We should all get together and make a country in which everybody can eat turkey whenever he pleases.

Only one in four jokes ever works, and I still can’t predict what people will laugh at.

I’m so old, I don’t buy green bananas any more.

When you’re in comedy, people always come up and say, ‚Oh, it must be so hard.‘ It really isn’t hard unless you’re not good at it. If you can do it, its really kind of fun and easy.

It’s a good thing we don’t get all the government we pay for.

What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.

There’s nothing funnier than the human animal.

In 1969, I gave up women and alcohol – it was the worst 20 minutes of my life.

Some sarcasm is best told simply.

It is really funny when people say you’d be obvious for a great villain.

An unemployed court jester is nobody’s fool.

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