You can teach somebody how to be a brain surgeon, but you cannot teach them how to walk on a stage and make people laugh.

You wanna get the truth out of me, get me hammered.

I was desperate for new material, so anything I can write a joke about that works is in the act. No matter who it offends, or who it bothers - doesn't matter if its something my wife hates.

Don't bring your kids to my show, and I won't come to your house and cuss.

I don't have a specific plan except for as long as people want to listen to me talk, I'm going to keep talking. I can't imagine a life without doing standup.

My opening acts are always really strong because I need a guy who can take on a big, big crowd. Which is not that easy to do.

I'd rather do a really good small part than a really bad big part.

Everybody I know is a joke writer.

The hardest that I've laughed at a movie was probably Team America. I laughed 'til I thought I was just gonna throw up. I almost had to turn it off.

Ultimately I'm the writer for me, but also, anytime one of my friends gets stuck with a bit, they can call me, and I'm pretty good at helping them get there.

I was by far the least popular of the Blue Collar crew when we started. There was a definite pecking order, and everybody knew it.

I was so in love with the idea of making people laugh for a living that I didn't care what I had to do to get there. Or how much money I was going to make when I did get there.

I still love to walk on stage and make people laugh, and I work very, very hard at it, and I take it seriously.

The only way to stay sharp is to do live shows. There is no part-time comedy.

I don't think we have a surplus of fine educators in this country that we can just start dropping them for no reason whatsoever.

I do live like a rock star, but it's not as great as it sounds. It's a lot of traveling.

If you become famous and don't have a live show to back it up, they're not going to pay you any money.

I could do no wrong in my mother's eyes from the day I was born. My fans bought her a very nice house in San Antonio, and she has a great life.

If I sit down to write a joke about, whatever, the polluted Gulf of Mexico, it comes out mundane to me.

Vegas is famous for a lot of things, and bad marriages are one of them. Margo and I are proof that you can make this work. It just takes a little effort.

I don't like to do material people have heard. Now, they like to hear material that they know, because that's the stuff that made me famous, and, unfortunately, I don't do a ton of it.

I go to more open mic nights than open mikers.

There have been times when I played more than others, but I've been a road comic for a quarter of a century, so I've always played golf on the road because you have a lot of time to kill.

All of my comedian friends are some of the best joke writers in the world.

If you watch the 'Blue Collar Comedy Tour,' don't expect that when you come see me by myself, 'cause it's a little rougher.

As a small child, I could watch anything happen and tell a story, and it was funny.

I was a comedy fan when I was a little kid.

As long as I stay engaged with everybody else, then I'll create more comedy. It's just when I shut off and stay at home... What helps me is just to keep moving.

I loved listening to laughter even as a little kid.

I don't like to do burnt material on stage. Even though my crowd loves to hear me do old stuff, I don't like to do old stuff. So I do very, very little of it.

My shows are not all-the-way filthy, but they can be.

I begged the universe to make me a famous comedian, and it did. So I tend not to ask for any more.

That's the beauty of being a straight-to-DVD star. It really helps you stay under the media's radar.

The Majestic Theatre in San Antone is as good as it gets.

You can tell on-stage when a joke's starting to lose its pop. It doesn't mean people don't want to hear it anymore; it means I don't want to do it anymore. Because I want to move on to something that has a knee-jerk reaction just like you get when you tell somebody a joke that they've never heard.

When I was about 12 years old back in Houston, my Dad used to take us to the driving range.

I write these shows one joke at a time. There's no continuity. I do try to figure an order to the stories, but there's not continuity.

Here's how I operate. When I see something I like, 20 years later, I ask her brother for her phone number. She don't even see me coming.

Anybody could say anything they want about me, and it literally never penetrates my skin.

I do a lot of gay-friendly stuff in my show, and men, women, they all love it. I practice non-judgment in my daily life and hope other people do the same thing.

People used to say I'm regional, but I'm not... We all have the same human condition.

My favorite bands are the Allman Brothers and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

I've been offered starring roles in horrible movies, but I just didn't want to do it. I don't see why you would.

But I work harder now because I have so much more exposure. And actually the harder you work as a writer, the better you get at it. It's like anything else. It's a muscle you have to exercise. I write more now than ever.

I don't know who in my family thinks very fast at all, including me. The things that people see me do onstage are written, so it doesn't have to be very quick if you have all day with a pen.

Anything I write that I consider stage-quality work, I won't give my TV show. I put it in my live show.

I want my fans to feel like we're always in touch. Because without 'em, I wouldn't be able to do any of this.

TV is a hard job. You work 15 hours a day. People tell you what to do. I hate to do it.

There's no idea or concept in comedy you could do that hasn't been attacked from some angle. But if you start leaving punchlines out so you'll look cool, I don't get that. But I don't watch standup anyway, so I don't know what they're doing.

I'm not willing to drag my fans down a road I don't believe in. That's just my one little principle. I've only got one, and that's it.