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.

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 can remember the frustration of not being able to talk. I knew what I wanted to say, but I could not get the words out, so I would just scream.

What I try to do for my readers is to pass on some of the things that I found out about being thirteen after doing it for forty years.

In this watering-place I acted an heroic character, badly studied; and being a novice on such a stage, I forgot my part before a pair of lovely blue eyes.

Young people discovering their sexuality must know they walk with a strong tradition and that they are not alone. They have a right to information without being pressured.

Being a publicist is like management in a lot of ways - you're their friend, you're their mother, you're their confidante.

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.

I became hooked on the idea of being able to shoot an image and process it myself, and end up with a product.

Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.

It is too maddening. I've got to fly off, right now, to some devilish navy yard, three hours in a seasick steamer, and after being heartily sick, I'll have to speak three times, and then I'll be sick coming home. Still, who would not be sick for England?

I don't like being recognised, I have no interest in being famous at all, I just do what I do. If I could be like Captain Kirk and beam myself up and then beam myself down, I would!

I'm glad I'm not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone's tape recording what you say.

Being a musician is what I do, but it's not what I am.

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.

We've had it very clear to the Bosnians that our obligation to equip and train their forces is completely conditional on the foreign forces being gone.

My parents were amazing people who had no business being together - and they knew it.

Teachers started recognizing me and praising me for being smart in science and that made me want to be even smarter in science!