Quotes

As much experience, education and awareness as one can attain is important for a comedian.

I am in the Master of Professional Writing program teaching Humor Writing, Literary and Dramatic.

The old problems--love, money, security, status, health, etc.--are still here to plague us or please us.

I was an actor before becoming a comedian.

As a culture I see us as presently deprived of subtleties. The music is loud, the anger is elevated, sex seems lacking in sweetness and privacy.

I will always love to perform standup comedy.

I quit smoking well over 20 years ago.

I believe it is important for comedians to know who came before them.

I am presently in my 13th year of teaching a graduate course at the University of Southern California.

I am careful with my material and presentation.

[referring to his best-selling comedy albums, "Inside Shelley Berman", "Outside Shelley Berman" and "The Edge of Shelley Berman"] "Outside" came in '60. "The Edge" in '61. All three [went] gold, but the biggest seller was "Inside".

My whole act is confession.

My first job was at a Chicago nightclub called Mr. Kelly's.

"Inside" [his album "Inside Shelley Berman"] was the second LP album of a comedian's performance before an audience.

Incidentally, I'm still looking for acting work, my first love.

So that this thing that aired in 1963 would result a few years later in personal bankruptcy, would result in having people be on edge with me, wondering when I'm going to blow up.

Unquestionably, standup comedy is and has always been an art form.

[referring to his comedy album, "The Edge of Shelley Berman"] Though it sold very well, I hated "The Edge".

The Steve Allen Sunday-night show had the right to two options after my first performance.

The most memorable performance was my appearance in concert in Carnegie Hall. The first standup to do so.

While you're improvising, you may come up with something which will break him up. As soon as that smile comes out, you know that, hey, we're having fun.

[on Bennett Cerf, with whom he worked on What's My Line? (1950)] Bennett Cerf absolutely knew it all. Believe me. He was the smartest, most reasonable, intelligent human being. If you doubt me, ask him.

[on his appearance in The Mind and the Matter (1961)] I recall we were shooting and [Rod Serling] came to me one day and said, "How are things going?" I told him I loved it and everything [but in the episode] "everybody looks like me in the world and everybody acts like me in the world and it's great and everybody's going to know that and feel it--the only thing is, there are no women who are like me." The next day I was dressed in full drag--and I was a woman. They made me up and I was in an elevator going up the floors and I attack a man who wasn't careful about his hands.