Incidentally, I'm still looking for acting work, my first love.

I will always love to perform standup comedy.

Incidentally, I'm still looking for acting work, my first love.

I believe it is important for comedians to know who came before them.

I was an actor before becoming a comedian.

My first job was at a Chicago night club called Mr. Kelly's.

I am presently in my thirteenth year of teaching a graduate course at the University of Southern California.

The Steve Allen Sunday night show had the right to two options after my first performance.

I am in the Master of Professional Writing program teaching Humor Writing, Literary and Dramatic.

While you're improvising, you may come up with something which will break him up. As soon as that smile comes out, you know that, hey, we're having fun.

The old problems - love, money, security, status, health, etc. - are still here to plague us or please us.

Though it sold very well, I hated The Edge.

As much experience, education and awareness as one can attain is important for a comedian.

As a culture I see us as presently deprived of subtleties. The music is loud, the anger is elevated, sex seems lacking in sweetness and privacy.

I quit smoking well over twenty years ago.

Outside came in '60. The Edge in '61. All three made Gold, but the biggest seller was Inside.

My whole act is confession.

So that this thing that aired in 1963 would result a few years later in personal bankruptcy, would result in having people be on edge with me, wondering when I'm going to blow up.

Inside was the second LP album of a comedian's performance before an audience.

The most memorable performance was my appearance in concert in Carnegie Hall. The first standup to do so.

I am careful with my material and presentation.

Unquestionably, standup comedy is and has always been an art form.

The old problems love money security status health etc. are still here to plague us or please us.

It was always part of the plan to move into acting.

Be where the acting is. I live in Houston. Dallas is 4 1/2 hours away. I let them know there's no difference.

My mother keeps things in perspective for me. She makes me realize that the acting I do and love is no more important than what one of my brothers does-he works in a shoe repair shop. If my career ever tapers off, I'll go to college.

In Hungary, acting is a career for which one fits himself as earnestly as one studies for a degree in medicine, law, or philosophy.

I think acting is about forgetting yourself in order to give the best of yourself. It's passing through you more than you're creating it. You're not the flower, but the vase which holds the flower.

In LA, too many people want to go the quickest route from A to B. Method acting offers them that.

I don't see it as a form of healing, because if you have wounds that are bleeding I don't think acting will ever get them to stop. But I find acting is a form of illumination.

Maybe I can't act, but I know the gimmicks. I studied acting all my life and know what's good for me.

I know that if I'd had to go and take an exam for acting, I wouldn't have got anywhere. You don't take exams for acting, you take your courage.

I'm not acting, but I am acting.

I've done a lot of acting. I'm not saying I'm the greatest, but I'd love to act, I'd love to sing.

I had a bonding problem when I went off and boxed for five years. I was over in Europe and Asia fighting because I wanted to do something different; I was tired of acting. But the thing is, when I was done doing that, I couldn't get a job.

Acting for me is not that quid pro quo.

If you're acting, then there's a prescribed way to behave; whereas in life there's no prescribed way. So acting feels like a comfortable way to get through the day.

When I was a kid, the idea of why I wanted acting to be the thing I do for the rest of my life was different. It was, Oh yeah, I'll get girls and be famous.

And then, I suppose, there's also a cinematic reality on top of that. Because it was extremely difficult to keep tabs on, it was quite confusing acting that.

I read. It's also nice for me to get involved in schoolwork, which is a totally different world than acting. It makes me feel like I am doing things that normal people are doing at my age.

It's a living, breathing thing, acting.

A few nights ago I went to a Hollywood screening of a small independent film made by Sally Kirkland, an old friend of mine who also did terrific job acting in it. There were other actors in it and they were all terrific.

Plastic surgery and breast implants are fine for people who want that, if it makes them feel better about who they are. But, it makes these people, actors especially, fantasy figures for a fantasy world. Acting is about being real being honest.

I don't see my dancing or acting as two separate things. I don't define them separately, so I can't say one has helped the other, It's all the same thing. More than anything I love being on stage and performing.

In any case, his judgment and set of values, acting alone or through his assistants, determine not only what is gold and what is dross but the design of the history which he creates out of the metal. The historian decides what is significant, and what is not.

It always surprised me that I was getting acting work.

Acting doesn't bring anything to a text. On the contrary, it detracts from it.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

We believe, in fact, that the one act of respect has little force unless matched by the other - in balance with it... The acting out of that dual respect I would name as precisely the source of our power.