I wrote three books about growing up in the Bronx.

When I was 20-something, 30, I fell down a flight of stairs and hurt my back. I went to a therapist who said don't get out of bed until you do certain stretches, and I've been doing them ever since. I guess I'm the original yogi.

I figure I'm just one of many people. I'm not that different from anybody else, and I don't have great language, highfalutin' language - I'm very ordinary. So I figure if I write about myself, other people with similar feelings and experiences would go, 'Oh, that's me.'

You can get the best out of people if they're happy and not worried or not frightened that they're going to make a mistake.

I never like to do parodies. I never do. It's just not my style of comedy.

There's a glorious sense of freedom in comedy, just allowing myself to tell jokes, allowing myself to interrupt myself and tell old African folk stories that I made up - or didn't - and Jamaican stories.

I think what is important for things to be funny is if you the listener, or the reader, get a chance to supply the humor of it yourself.

People think I'm a very serious actor, which I am. But you know, if you don't have a sense of humor doing what I do, you perish.