I'm not offended. Lenny Bruce taught me that everything's funny. You can make everything funny. I don't think that assassinations are funny, I don't think you can make fun of ISIS, but almost everything is funny. And If we can't laugh at ourselves, who can we laugh at? So I don't mind ethnic humor. I like ethnic humor. I like dialect jokes. Laughter is a very subjective thing. If it's funny to you it's funny. And a lot of things are funny to me.
They didn't know why these things were funny. Sometimes you laugh because you've got no more room for crying. Sometimes you laugh because table manners on a beach are funny. And sometimes you laugh because you're alive, when you really shouldn't be.
Sometimes during the day, I consciously focus on some ordinary object and allow myself a momentary "paying-attention." This paying-attention gives meaning to my life. I don't know who it was, but someone said that careful attention paid to anything is a window into the universe. Pausing to think this way, even for a brief moment, is very important. It gives quality to my day.
Observe it, the vulgar often laugh, but never smile, whereas well-bred people often smile, and seldom or never laugh. A witty thing never excited laughter, it pleases only the mind and never distorts the countenance.
The problem is that we live in an uptight country. Why don't we just laugh at ourselves? We are funny. Gays are funny. Straights are funny. Women are funny. Men are funny. We are all funny, and we all do funny things. Let's laugh about it.
And then you'd turn to me and smile that funny smile, and I know you'd forgotten all about me and just remembered -- but I was never mad at you. Half of your attention is better than all of anyone else's.
The vulgar only laugh, but never smile; whereas well-bred people often smile, but seldom laugh.
You make a mistake, you better hope I wasn't paying attention and didn't see it, but if I catch you doing it and you think I'm not paying attention, then that's when you get in trouble.
You think everybody's paying attention to what you're doing. No, they're paying attention to what's interesting to them.
In certain ways, we, many of us, stopped paying attention to the world. I have to think we would have moved on the whole climate issue in a different way if we'd been paying better attention.
The challenge is, well, there's a huge challenge, which is when you're improvising, you're meant to sort of clear your mind completely, just be open and funny, and paying, you know, paying attention.
Sometimes if you get 'em too drunk they don't pay no attention to what you're doin' anyways, so you might as well just do old songs. But if you get one that's paying attention, sometimes we'll do some new material.
Rapping can be repetition sometimes. Sometimes you gotta highlight your words in a certain kind of way. So I always was a fan of sing-rapping. It was always funny to me a little bit, and I think that being funny and being able to laugh, even at yourself, is a form of flattery.
Sometimes you can't help but pay attention to what is written about you. You are trying not to because it's generally not constructive, it can be very funny, in which case it's fine to pay attention to it if you're going to laugh about it. But if it's going to get you angry then it's a pretty pointless waste of energy, so I try and be selective about what I take an interest in about myself.
Crashing is never funny, but sometimes you can jump up, laugh at your stupidity, and go, 'What the hell was that?'
Sometimes laughing isn't the best judge of what's funny, 'cause I think there's a lot of things that are really funny that don't make you laugh, that don't make you physically, audibly make a noise, but is something that is much more powerful than that.