Sam Kinison

“Stand-up comedy is an art form and it dies unless you expand it.”

“I don't deny my life-style is occasionally pretty wild.”

“I have lived a carnal life.”

“I'd rather entertain people than offend them.”

“In the 1990s, it's OK to do comedy about the Chernobyl disaster or the Space Shuttle blowing up. It's acceptable to ridicule the Pope or the President of the United States, but God forbid you do a joke... about gays. The gay community is the last sacred cow in this society.”

“Everything can be satirized.”

“It was great to be the rock comic, the shock comic. But after you've played Giants Stadium with Bon Jovi in front of 82,000 people, after you've done the 'Wild Thing' video with Jessica Hahn and every rock band from hell, you're not gonna top that.”

“You don't know what a rough crowd is. If all I have to do is go make people laugh, that's nothing. Let me tell you what a tough crowd is. A tough crowd is going to a morning service and you got six people there and you gotta pat your house payment. That's a tough crowd.”

“I got divorced, which was not a good thing for a revivalist minister. It did not go down well. I'd already been banned from a couple churches for my jokes. So one day I woke up and decided it was time to start living for myself.”

“Jim Bakker. He's lost everything, he's ruined. And the worst thing of all he still has to wake up to her!”

“Folks, I've been straight for seventeen days... Not all in a row.”

“It was like going to church, except Ozzy Osbourne was there.”

“So many of these comics are just frustrated singers or actors - they want to get a gig doing a sitcom. It's paint-by-the-numbers comedy, lame joke-telling. They're drawn to it as a career move.”

“I don't worry about terrorism. I was married for two years.”

“Obviously I'm not a role model for impressionable youth.”

“Jesus is still up in Heaven, thumbing through his Bible, going 'Where did I say build a water slide?'”

“So many people counted on me to be the party, I had to move far enough away that they wouldn't want to drive there.”

“Society needs a couple of vents that say what you're not supposed to say.”

“I started saying things in church that didn't meet with a lot of approval - like 'Jesus isn't coming back.' They started throwing Bibles.”

“I've never been against women. That anti-feminist rap is bogus. I think men should be nice to women, buy them diamonds.”