Looking back, I remember my family laughing a lot. We were never the kind of people that dwelled on hard times. My family laughs when things are tough. Growing up like that, I got used to making jokes about things that were difficult. So when I started doing stand-up, that's what I went towards.

My goal has always been to just kind of show how my family, we might be a different culture, but we're completely like everybody else.

That's what makes a good show. It doesn't target one group. It tells a story everyone gets.

My stand-up has a lot of performance in it, and I loved doing it so much that, after years, I put the idea of having a show on the back burner.

I have already spent Christmas Eve and Christmas morning alone, missing my children, and crying because I have no family nearby.

That summer after the draft was probably the most fun I've ever had, because all I had to do every day was wake up and go work out for four or five hours. I got to play some golf, which I love to do, too, and then got to hang out with my family.

When my mother left home, her family sat shivah for her, more because my father was not Jewish than because he was black.

Things I didn't have in the past I try to give to kids. I know how it feels not to have things. We were poor, but we had enough food to eat. It was a big family, four kids, and it was not like you could just go and buy something. But we had the essentials, the food.