Modesty is not one of my virtues.
Comedy is an amazing calling. Once you get that first laugh, it's hard to turn away. Then, of course, you're hooked and you have to learn how to survive in the business.
And humor has always been a weapon. You want to get even on somebody? You want to attack somebody? Make fun of them.
I just never saw my mother in any other room but the kitchen. There were always pots going.
I had a sympathetic role in 'thirtysomething,' and in two weeks I'm going to do the role again. But in the movies, I just love the heavies. It's much more fun. Villains are a ball. People have been laughing at me for 50 years, so I love to sit in the back of the theater and listen to them hate me.
My mother's sister was killed in a trolley car accident, so I was raised as one of eight with my sister and six male cousins.
One thing I've never said in my whole life is, 'Let's have dinner at a Japanese restaurant.'
My favorite way to spend Saturday is in and out of bed, watching sports on TV and eating.
I made it, Ma - Carnegie Hall. And I didn't have to practice.
As a parent, I'd - I'd be a better father.
That's the great thing about New Year's, you get to be a year older. For me, that wasn't such a joke, because my birthday was always around this time. When I was a kid, my father used to tell me that everybody was celebrating my birthday. That's what the trees are all about.
When I read Dickens for the first time, I thought he was Jewish, because he wrote about oppression and bigotry, all the things that my father talked about.
As life's pleasures go, food is second only to sex. Except for salami and eggs. Now that's better than sex, but only if the salami is thickly sliced.
My brother is the youngest member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons. And I wouldn't let him cut my nails.
Larry David finds a way to make jokes about the Holocaust. It would never have occurred to me. And it was funny.
Ed Sullivan brought me to TV first in 1952, then Garry Moore's program gave me a lot of confidence and freedom.
It's not easy being a father, but I've been allowed a comeback.
Eating takes a special talent. Some people are much better at it than others. In that way, it is like sex, and as with sex, it's more fun with someone who really likes it. I can't imagine having a lasting friendship with anyone who is not interested in food.
I won't eat in a place that has suits of armor.
Everything my mother made had to cook for 80 hours, and when she made matzoh balls she didn't know fluffy. Everything sank.
There's nobody to believe in anymore, nobody to trust.
The ability to absorb a book and make someone else's words and story your own was exactly was I was doing on stage.
When I get up in the morning, I have to decide what I'm going to have for dinner or I can't get through the day.
