David Alan Basche

I'm grateful for my health, glad I'm making people laugh, glad my wife still likes me after a lotta years, grateful my daughter is growing, glad I don't take myself too seriously, glad L.A. has Astro Burger, grateful to be coming home to Harlem soon. It's a gratitude list. It works.

The first moment I saw my wife breastfeed our daughter minutes after birth, I was hit with a thunderbolt of understanding and awe for the miracle of it all, and I still feel that way.

Stop running around, stop trying to return every email in your inbox immediately, stop cramming too much stuff into too few hours in the day. Sit down, shut up, and most importantly, be glad.

I have to admit: I have been known to be obsessively neat and like things arranged 'just so.'

A fan once stopped me outside a theatre and gave me as a gift a signed photograph of Sir Laurence Olivier. It was strange, but nice, too.

I love the sitcom schedule. It takes a week to make an episode, but we don't work on weekends. I'm usually done in time to get home for dinner with my wife and daughter.

I watched Mark Rylance in the Broadway revival of 'La Bete,' and it knocked my socks off. The complete commitment, passion, and unbridled enjoyment in every moment of what he was doing was overwhelming.

I love telling stories, telling jokes, making people laugh. I've got no plans to stop doing it.

I'm happy to be the guy on the subway that people stare at and they just can't quite place it. I don't really like my life intruded upon too much. In a way, it's kind of nice to not be all that well known.

When I met Bono at the Cannes Film festival while I was there for the film 'United 93,' he said to me, 'That's a great film, brother. Thank you for your courage in making it.' I plotzed.

I love comedy because I can laugh at myself. I don't take myself too seriously.

Comedy can be more difficult than drama. It requires more attention to timing. In the theater, you're always dependent on the audience for the energy, but in comedy the feedback you get is more important. You can judge by the quickness and the length of the laugh just where you stand with the audience.