The radio was my big influence. Comedy came from the instinctual feel I had for language.

When I started really singing I was 17, 18 years old. I used to go around trying to be a singer in the Bronx. My knees would shake but I learned by doing.

I enjoyed my grandparents very much. My mother and father would always allow me to stay with them.

I think Pirandello had something to say to people about what truth really is.

My father was an American who could cuss in Italian and make an aria out of it. It was wonderful to watch. But then again, he was a Gemini. I believe in that stuff.

They would wake me up when I was sleeping, and say sing a song for our friends. I had a sweet voice, I had a nice little tenor voice. God knows what I sang, but my whole family would admire me.

I went to Brooklyn College and met this beautiful Jewish girl named Merle, with dark hair, exotic looking and brilliant. So we got married and had three children.

I've always wanted to play Don Quixote in some way. It's a great role. I think the idealism of the man shows that hope that we have in the human breast to achieve something.

Uncle Junior is a criminal, which makes him a villain, so it makes people want to watch him. My whole life as an actor has been preparing for something like this.

I went on tour in the play H.M.S. Pinafore.

I tried to become a family man. I got married, but it didn't work out. After 22 months we got an annulment. Then I married an Italian girl, which resulted in an immediate annulment. I had two annulments by the time I was 23.

For TV I don't think I could have gotten a better part than Uncle Junior because of the intimacy of the character based on David Chase's brilliant writing.

The radio was my big influence. Comedy came from the instinctual feel I had for language.

I don't like the way Uncle Junior dresses. He loves it.

The anger that Uncle Junior has comes from my background. My father was the son of an Italian immigrant, and I've seen the fire of the Italian temperament. It can be explosive sometimes in ways that are both funny and tragic.

I had to audition for the part of Jnior, and I wanted the role terribly because I knew it was a great character. This guy is a wonderful, funny, mean old guy.

I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage.

The kinds of shows that seem to work now, the comedy shows, are those which require very little attention. They're superficial and I like articulate comedy.

A lot of people have gotten into comedy because of certain influences in their lives or events that were painful, and I really have wracked my brain to figure it out. I pretty much have had a normal childhood. Maybe it was too normal.

I grew up wanting to make movies, and along the way I suddenly found that I had a career doing comedy.

I really enjoy comedy. It's a real challenge.

I've mainly been in dramas, so this is one of my first comedy kind of performances in Cecil B. Demented.

Well I sure had been looking for a comedy for years without any success.

Comedy is so hard; it's so much harder than drama. The pacing of it, the energy of it.

Stand-up comedy and poverty. Those were my two main endeavors.

It seems like when I first started, people got into comedy because they wanted to be good comedians.

It is really hard to do comedy; it takes a lot of energy and focus. It's rather like music: It's a lot of hitting notes precisely.

This is one of his most human and most amusing and witty novels. The characters are very Indian. I decided that I wanted to do a comedy, so this was just the right one.

The English can be a very critical, unforgiving people, but criticism can be good. And this is a country that loves comedy.

Black Comedy is a farce that is played in the dark, as you know, with the lights full on. It's the Chinese convention of reversing light and dark, and exactly where anybody is at any given moment is the play.

I'd really been wanting to do a television series. I was looking for a comedy.

I think Andy Kaufman is to comedy what the Velvet Underground was to music - it's like, 80 thousand records sold, but everybody who bought one started a band.

Comedy is really not like any other art form in that it's very specialized and varied in it's content, but generic in it's title.

Comedy may be big business but it isn't pretty.

The duty of comedy is to correct men by amusing them.

My mom and dad are both in stand-up comedy, so that's where I started, that's where I got everything. My roots are holding the mic.

That title, is one of the things I fought for. A lot of people said "But it's stupid, and it's the title of a comedy movie, and people won't take it seriously," and I'm sure there are some people who still don't. But for the most part, people do see that we really have a quality show.

I mean comedy is something that's very personal and people have strong opinions about.

I would recommend that anyone who wants to do comedy on TV to do radio first.

Years have passed since I have set foot in a comedy club. If the comic is doing badly it's painful, and if the comic is doing brilliantly, it's extremely painful.

I'm doing comedy development at National Lampoon.

Comedy is ridiculously hard. And if the rhythm is not right, if the music or the line is not right, it's not funny.

I left Indiana, and I ain't been back since. I've been doing comedy and paying my bills.

Harpo Marx looks like a musical comedy.

I want to do drama, light comedy, the whole range.

And if you have great writing, it's really easy, but if it's not so great and you have to work a little harder, I could tell where the work needed to be done but comedy is just fun.

I'd like to come back because I really miss doing situation comedy.

Comedy. I think that's something I'd really like to do.

I will always love to perform standup comedy.