I always wanted to be a zookeeper when I was growing up, and I've wound up a zookeeper! I've been working with the Los Angeles Zoo for 45 years! I'm the luckiest old broad on two feet because my life is divided absolutely in half - half animals and half show business. You can't ask for better than two things you love the most.

I have my golden retriever now, Pontiac. He's a career-change guide dog from Guide Dogs for the Blind.

I'm so compulsive about stuff, I know if I had ever gotten pregnant, of course, that would have been my whole focus. But I didn't choose to have children because I'm focused on my career. And I just don't think, as compulsive as I am, that I could manage both.

I had to make a major decision with myself because I just don't think you can do both: try to have a baby career and raise it and have a baby baby and raise it. And to try to do justice to either one. It was a very conscious decision on my part not to have children - which I have never regretted.

Laurence Olivier said in an interview once that when he plays a tragedy he always aims for the funny parts, and the other way around. Because in a comedy you look for what's serious. I think that's true. Sometimes things are really funny if you're absolutely earnest. If you're really serious, it's hilarious.

The first time I heard Richard Pryor, I knew he would be a major force in the world of comedy.

Our comedy was light-hearted amusement that seemingly tripped naturally off the tongue. That's why I don't think it will date.

I was writing this really long joke about the smell of poop, and I was like, 'What am I doing with my life?' I started to think about why I was a comedian, and then I came up with a reason for existence, which is: inserting absurdity or stupidity into strangers' lives in order to make the world a better place.