I starred in a Broadway play that was Sidney Poitier's first directing job and the cast was Lou Gossett, Cicely Tyson, Diana Ladd and I played a Jewish kid who offered himself as a slave to two Columbia University students as reparations.

The one thing an audience always has in common with a comedian is troubles. The Yiddish word for that is tsuris. You're always putting your tsuris on stage whether you like it or not. No one is untroubled, unless they're just, you know, an imbecile.

When I started, you didn't make a lot of money by being a comedian. You didn't get a lot of respect.

Comedians talk to other comedians the way jazz musicians can talk to each other.

In a romantic comedy, it's usually a good idea to have people who can't stand the fact that they are attracted to each other.

I think of everything as comedy, but I don't think of it in terms of sitcom comedy, I think of it in terms of Chekhov comedy. Chekhov called his plays comedies. There's always a mixture of a laugh with sadness. So the plie to the laugh is sadness.

I think comedy is something I enjoy, so it comes effortlessly.

Puns are a form of humor with words.