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

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.

I never taste the wine first in restaurants, I just ask the waiter to pour.

Taste is a result of a thousand distastes.

Most turkeys taste better the day after, my mother's tasted better the day before.

I just have my own taste, and I just try and stick with that. I'm just trying to play as many characters as I can for as long as I have an opportunity to.

There is something majestic in the bad taste of Italy.

I think decor says a lot about someone's social position, their taste, their sensibility, their work - and also about the aesthetic way I have chosen to tell their story.

Sometimes it's more important to be human, than to have good taste.

There is a fine line between censorship and good taste and moral responsibility.

I started rooting - you know, sticking up joints - with some older guys. By now I had gotten a taste of what the racket world really was - the glamour, the way they dressed, the way they always had a pocketful of money.

People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.

We never taste a perfect joy; our happiest successes are mixed with sadness.

The artistic taste of the Catholic priests is appalling and I am most anxious to have a Catholic church in which everything is genuine and good, and not tawdry and ostentatious.

One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.

To be a member of the Communist Party is to have a taste of the police state. It is a diluted taste but is bitter and unforgettable.

Read as you taste fruit or savor wine, or enjoy friendship, love or life.

I suppose that I was a kind of consultant for taste. Is it good taste? Or bad taste? I had an attention to detail, to what would tell best the story. Because many people get excited about the work and drift off from the story.