Quotes

[on his sense of comedy] I'm sure there's a little psychosis. I'm the youngest of seven children and every once in a while I wonder: Did I get enough attention? If I could make my older brothers and sisters laugh, that was a high-water mark.

[on his mother] If you made her laugh really hard, she'd make this strange, precious pup sound, a weird squeak. My brother has a picture of my mum in her rocking chair, wiping a tear from her eye in the middle of that laugh. To me, that will always be the image of my mother - cracking up.

I remember once this guy stormed up after a show, incensed because he heard I was a clean comic but I'd said 'Oh, God' in the show. That was blasphemous to him. We've gotten to be this weird society where people think the worst thing that can happen to them is having their sensibilities offended. There's people out fighting for their lives, and you're upset because I've said something that offends you? I don't know when we got that soft.

[on audiences} Every time you collect 500. 800, a thousand people together, they become a different creature from the one in the town the night before. The first five minutes you're out there you're encountering this brand-new animal and you don't know what it likes, what it hates, what it fears, how you're going to keep it from tearing you apart, and how you can get it to roll over so you can rub its belly. It's as real thrill and I love it.

I've had this little mantra. The enemy of comedy is conspicuous effort.