I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. 10 of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.
Terry Gross, Fresh Air, NPR, 8 May 2020 source ↗
Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty…I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.
I lived on a couch in my office for ten years, and then luckily, I got wealthy enough to build a little penthouse on the roof — 700 square feet — and I moved up there. It was a lot nicer. I just walked up the stairs one floor. My office was on the top floor, and I just walked up to go to bed, and that way, I had another hour to work every day, because when I walked downstairs, I was instantly in my office without having to fight traffic.
That's all I was: a teacher. That's all I was as a basketball coach, just a teacher.
An ungodly amount. So much of timing and luck was involved. When I look back, I think if things just hadn't worked out as they did on every occasion, I'd have never gotten where I did.
I ignored my stand-up career for 25 years, but now, having finished this memoir, I view this time with surprising warmth. One can have, it turns out, an affection for the war years.
Sir Roger Bannister, Amy Tan, John Wooden, Pete Rozelle, Theodore Roosevelt, Ted Turner
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