Hopefully standup will become special again.

On some level any appearance on Television can be seen as a product endorsement.

The development of the comedy club industry destroyed the uniqueness and intimacy of the profession but it also created jobs for comics and bred some great performers.

When you actually meet the devil and he offers you a deal most artists eventually negotiate.

I'm not completely sure we aren't all living in a hallucination now.

I think seeing Pryor's first movie, Live In Concert, when I was in high school changed my life. Pryor really put the heart in darkness for me.

For my next trick I will make everyone understand me.

The bile makes it better. I am an information wasting machine - 100s of words a day.

Have you ever had one of those moments when you look up and realize that you're one of those people you see on the train talking to themselves?

The Internet has usurped the collective unconscious and access to cosmic consciousness has become difficult and almost primitive.

I think that standup has always been an acquired taste and there was always only a handful of performers that were really inspired.

Surveillance induced morality: relics of cultural retardation.

I didn't know that people compared Bill Hicks and I but certainly I'm flattered if they do. I knew Bill a bit. We had dinner a couple of times and played guitar together once. I really tried to keep my distance from him professionally.

In the sixties and seventies you could probably name all the great comics. It was still special.

Comedy is obviously a matter of personal taste and the world always needs a clown and some people have no taste at all and any clown will do.

When I was a young kid I loved Don Rickles, Buddy Hackett and Jackie Vernon.

The next evolutionary step is into the screen.

Jerusalem Syndrome is actually a rare psychological condition that occurs to some visitors to the Middle East. They get to Israel and just snap.

The demand for standup in the eighties was created by how easy it was to exploit 'comedians' and create very cheap television programming.

As a performer you are being used to keep people watching so the commercial endorsements that support the network can be seen by as many people as possible.

We need the children of Indonesia and the Philippines to manufacture our freedom of choice.

When I was a bit older I had all of the George Carlin records, all of the Steve Martin records, all of the Cheech and Chong records and all of the Richard Pryor records.

Left wing, right wing, I am wingless and tired of trying to fly. Here comes the ground.

There are also always those burnt, hard kernels at the bottom that don't pop. You know why they don't pop? They don't pop because they have integrity.

I was also a big Woody Allen fan. When I got into college I listened to Lenny Bruce but it's taken me years to put him into context historically and really get what he did.

It's easy to maintain your integrity when no one is offering to buy it out.

Is it hard to make a living in show business? Yeah.

I'm sad to see the passing of the great drug warriors. I certainly did my part in that battle and I don't regret any of it.

It seems people are more willing to let other people control their minds now and recreational drug use doesn't seem to have that same renegade sense of adventure that it once did.

Hopefully standup will become special again.

It may have lost its special-ness forever and the clubs might not being doing well but I think standup is in the best shape it has been in a long time.

Show business is one of the few businesses that the devil will actually agree to own just a portion of your soul because he knows if you have a performer's ego you were probably working for him all along.

Art is supposed to punch you in the brain, and it's supposed to stay punched.

If you think it's going to rain, it will.

Set religion free, and a new humanity will begin.

Unless the reformer can invent something which substitutes attractive virtues for attractive vices, he will fail.

Every American deserves to live in freedom, to have his or her privacy respected and a chance to go as far as their ability and effort will take them - regardless of race, gender, ethnicity or economic circumstances.

It will take a long time, and certainly the West will remain the dominant civilization well into the next century, but the decline is occurring.

Given a fair wind, we will negotiate our way into the Common Market, head held high, not crawling in. Negotiations? Yes. Unconditional acceptance of whatever terms are offered us? No.

I think I've become a much better singer and a much better player. Years and years of playing a couple of hours every day will do that.

To hard necessity ones will and fancy must conform.

Almost everyone will find something in our services worth paying for.

I frankly don't care if you agree with my stand on abortion. I take that stand because no other stand is consistent with decent principles, and no other standard is consistent with the will of God.

Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.

Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will-whatever we may think.

There are those, I know, who will reply that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is. It is the American Dream.

I want to thank all the fans for their support over the years. Keep supporting the Knicks, we're moving in the right direction here and we will be exciting to watch and competing against the best in the NBA. Come back to the Garden for those exciting games.

How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.

And it was only released in London last week, so when I go back to England Monday or whatever, I am expecting heaps of adulation. I'm hoping there is. If that doesn't happen I will be disappointed.