Robert Klein

“I have a work-out regime; I am not a maniac. It sounds cliche, but stand-up comedy, doing a one-man show, helps keep me young, and yes, it is exhausting, but I don't collapse.”

“One of my greatest inspirations for stand-up was Jonathan Winters. He was a genius. One thing about him, and also Lenny Bruce, is that they were in the tradition of the one-man show. That's why Richard Pryor was so great, and George Carlin, too. They prowled the stage, they used voices, they were really talents.”

“The '50s were terrifying with nuclear bomb stuff but boring in a social way, and then the '60s were happening, and remember, there was no AIDS.”

“I guess I'm pleased and proud of the respect of my peers, and that when I disappear from the scene or from this earth, I will have left a mark. They'll say, 'He did it well.' I like being funny; it opens people up.”

“What makes a good nanny? A good nanny is someone who really wants to do the job. Someone who loves children, who really values what she does and, of course, is valued by her employer.”

“I was brought up at 3525 Decatur Avenue, in the north Bronx, right next to Woodlawn Cemetery.”

“I have what we call a 'symphony act.' I'm the only comedian, I think, in the country that does it.”

“I did the first HBO special ever in 1975 at Haverford College. Cable was new then: HBO was a Time-Life entity, with maybe 400,000 or 500,000 subscribers and maybe 50 employees.”

“But to do it professionally is a quantum leap difference and my father had to be persuaded by these kind of Ivy League professors that I should go to the Yale Drama School, another one of the stories in there.”

“But I think the other is a little more like bullfighting, a little more daring and although I appreciate good acting and I liked being versatile my whole career, it kept me working.”

“I wrote my book 'The Amorous Busboy Of Decatur Avenue' completely like a writer does, writing it down, re-writing everything. But in my stand-up, I improvise initially, never questioning it too closely.”

“The Broad research center represents the highest quality model of what Proposition 71 should be funding.”

“There is a cliche that probably has some anecdotal evidence on the side that comedians are very depressed people, but that's because no one is ever going to seem as funny in a normal conversation as compared to when they're up there onstage in the spotlight making a huge audience keel over with laughter.”

“When I started, there was no comedy community, no comedy industry; there were comedians.”

“My son has been a class clown and it sort of ran in the family.”

“I love live theater. I get my rocks off by doing stand-up, and I am the only actor. But to show up eight times a week and not have that time for myself; to do someone else's lines? When I work for Wendy Wasserstein or Terrence McNally, Neil Simon or even Shakespeare, I do not have the right to change the lines.”

“I'm not against profanity. It's an important part of the language when used properly.”

“Regis and I were inducted into the original Bronx Walk of Fame.”

“In the fifties I had dreams about touching a naked woman and she would turn to bronze or the dream about hot dogs chasing donuts through the Lincoln Tunnel.”

“So it took me five years because in the interim I have been doing a lot of personal appearances and movies and some television series that went into the plumbing and I stopped writing for a while.”