“I'm playing for the spirits every night, man. Every night Bird walks across the stage, every night Miles walks across the stage. Every night my son wants to hear this music, he walks across the stage. Everyone. All my fans who are no longer here, they want to hear this music.”

“I think I still play a role. I play a role in holding a banner of what once was and could be again.”

“I don't believe a work of art is complete until the viewer sees it.”

“Everyone leaves me alone in the bathtub. My phone's definitely not going to be in there with me. It's a great place to just isolate and think.”

“Believe it or not, I get a lot of people who just feel like outsiders, and that can include anybody.”

“I remember all my dreams…every night is another CinemaScope adventure.”

“…That was my John Kennedy story.”

“But I do want to emphasize — if I said in an interview that I'm a cultural Anglican, a cultural Christian, it means absolutely nothing as far as religious belief is concerned.”

“Oylem Habe iz a gute zakh/Lernen Toyre iz a beser zakh/Varf avek yeder yokh/Lern Toyre nokh un nokh/Oylem Habe iz a gute zakh.”

"There are lots of incredible people in the industry who aren’t often, if ever, on the public stage. They’re more my black swans than white whales."

“I'd rather drive for you than Lady Gaga."

And I said, "Really?"

"That's like asking: if you're stupid, are you happier? Maybe, but I'm not stupid."

“A fingertip feel for understanding how to appeal to the electorate in the most winning way.“

“I was in my early 30s when 9/11 happened. That's an old guy with his first hit song. But I was still this new kid on the block who had just got used to hearing my song on the radio suddenly performing at MSG with all the living icons of the world.”

“I like what I do. I like the classroom, I like the writing, I like the independence of it, and I like the advocacy role.”

“Once I began criticizing the ideas on the Left and the Democratic Party — for many years I was doing it to try to help them win — but once I started criticizing them around 2008, I was now doing my work in a minefield, and I have to be very careful what I say.”

“Then when I did my first show, everyone was interested in my being raised Orthodox and my marriage and what happened. I didn't know it was a crazy story until I went on stage. It was the thing that made me unique from other standups, I guess.”

“Nobody funnier than Norm McDonald. Nobody funnier.”

“It didn't do Michael a favor that I thought of him as being brilliant, and it didn't do a lot of people a favor that I thought in those terms, least of all myself. And at this point in my life, what's so moving is to reconnect with people who are just wonderful, who I didn't really know or notice enough to even share myself with when I was young. I had wonderful parents, but the unit of measurement was intelligence and originality and an ability to articulate the world as if that made you the master of it…but that, in fact, is not true.”

“But my wine and my whiskey and my cigars, which are the three things I like— I share, I drink, I trade. It’s around friendship, it's around community, it's around enjoyment.”