I did stand-up, weird and ignorant stuff about my career – anything for a laugh.

In Beverly Hills… they don’t throw their garbage away. They make it into television shows.

Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.

Stand-up comedy is mine: it’s my entity; it’s my brand; I own it. I do it when I want to do it.

Wit is educated insolence.

I myself have been on my own and utterly independent since I graduated. I haven’t belonged to any company or any system. It isn’t easy to live like this in Japan.

Who in their infinite wisdom decreed that Little League uniforms be white? Certainly not a mother.

I won’t do something unless I can get at least two or three good laughs out of it. If I can’t, it’s not gonna make the team.

I was 18 years old, and it was a dream come true for me to work out and eat great food for free. What else do you want in life? People think that is what it is like to be in a SEAL team, but it is less than a fraction of your career as a real SEAL.

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.

I’ve tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I’m afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.

I don’t like magic – but I have been known to make guys disappear.

The celebrity-chef thing, even at its worst, its most annoying, its silliest, its goofiest, its most egregious and cynical, has been a good thing.

OK, so what’s the speed of dark?

I’m spending a year dead for tax reasons.

I love everything about my job, except being away from the kids.

I don’t mind making jokes, but I don’t want to look like one.

When Jerry Springer thinks you’ve gone too far, my friends, you have gone too far.

Maybe I’ll give Broadway a try. But you know what would be great? Hosting the Oscars. I promise you, that would be a show no one forgot.

You know, my Grandpop Finnegan used to have an expression: he used to say, ‚Joey, the guy in Olyphant’s out of work, it’s an economic slowdown. When your brother-in-law’s out of work, it’s a recession. When you’re out of work, it’s a depression.‘

Everybody is entertained to death.

There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.

When I was younger and did a stand-up gig, it would take me two weeks to recover. Sometimes I’d get so panicked that I would stutter.

I’m comfortable in my own skin, no matter how far it’s stretched. Ha ha.

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

The great thing about having a bunch of kids is they just remind you that you’re the person who takes them to go poop!

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

Writers and books are cheap dates, especially when you compare the cost of a book with a ticket to the opera – or an NHL game.

A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.

It doesn’t matter if you want to be a teacher, an astronaut, or a reggaeton singer, you need to study.

I have often wanted to drown my troubles, but I can’t get my wife to go swimming.

Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

We don’t want people to leave the stadium until the game finishes.

Few men would dare to read their own autobiography if all their deeds were recorded in it; few can look back upon their entire career without a blush.

We participate in a tragedy; at a comedy we only look.

Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient.

The only way I’d be caught without makeup is if my radio fell in the bathtub while I was taking a bath and electrocuted me and I was in between makeup at home. I hope my husband would slap a little lipstick on me before he took me to the morgue.

It’s funny; recently I’ve started to notice people’s impersonations of me, and it’s basically like a hyperactive child.

In my school, the brightest boys did math and physics, the less bright did physics and chemistry, and the least bright did biology. I wanted to do math and physics, but my father made me do chemistry because he thought there would be no jobs for mathematicians.

It just seems there’s better things to do in your life than be on television if it’s not interesting, if it’s not challenging, if it’s not fun. You know? When it stops being those things for me, I’ll stop making television.

If someone has a really great boyfriend or career, I think, it’s cool that happens.

There’s something about being in front of a live audience that’s fun. It’s a really interesting, very electric, very alive, and intense experience, and you can’t get it anywhere else. And I’ve been doing it since I was 23, so it’s part of my being – it’s part of my fabric as a person.

This has been my life for many years; one role feeds the other.

If you tell me there’s something I can’t do, I’ll want to do it even more. Especially when it comes to entertaining.

Nashville is my home, and the reason why I get to do what I love.

It was 1996 and I was at a crossroads in my career. I had been working in Hollywood as a writer and was very unhappy. I had pitched an idea for a book some six months earlier, and the book packager, Joost Elffers, wanted me to write up a treatment for it.

I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol.

The one thing about the business of entertainment is that you have to learn patience.

My neighbor has a circular driveway… he can’t get out.

There is no such thing as fun for the whole family.

You see some of the weirdest people in Detroit casinos.

Every country is like a particular type of person. America is like a belligerent, adolescent boy; Canada is like an intelligent, 35-year-old woman. Australia is like Jack Nicholson. It comes right up to you and laughs very hard in your face in a highly threatening and engaging manner.

My only scheme was to be a rapper.

‚This guy’s a clown! He’s just all talk!‘ I’ve heard that many times in my career. And then they’re sleeping in the middle of the octagon.

If you can make a girl laugh, you can make her do anything.

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

I remember the first time I heard a teenager say ‚LOL.‘ Just what? But it means ‚laugh.‘ Why don’t you just laugh? What are you doing?

Stand-up is my baby.

Either he’s dead or my watch has stopped.

I work hard for the audience. It’s entertainment. I don’t need validation.