I can't figure women out. They put on makeup for three hours. They wear things that make them smaller. Things that make them bigger. Then they meet a man and they want truth.

When I was a kid I got no respect. The time I was kidnapped, and the kidnappers sent my parents a note they said, "We want five thousand dollars or you'll see your kid again."

I tell ya, sex is getting harder all the time. Me and my wife were trying to have sex for hours last night and I finally gave up. I asked her, "what, you can't think of anybody either?"

I come home from work early one day, and I see a guy jogging down the street in his underwear. I ask him, "Why are you jogging in your underwear?" He says, "You came home from work early".

When my wife drives, there's always trouble. The other day she took the car. She came home. She told me, There's water in the carburetor. I asked her, Where's the car? She said, In a lake.

I tell ya, I knew my morning wasn't going right. When I put on my shirt the button fell off, when I picked up my briefcase, the handle fell off, I tell ya, I was afraid to go to the bathroom.

Once when I was lost I asked a policeman to help me find my parents. I said to him, 'Do you think we'll ever find them?' He answered, 'I don't know, kid. There are so many places they can hide.

Well with girls I don't get no respect. I had a blind date. I waited two hours on the corner. A girl walked by. I said Are you Louise? She said, Are you Rodney? I said, Yeah. She said, I'm not Louise.

[on 8/24/04, before entering a Los Angeles hospital for heart valve replacement surgery] If things go right, I'll be there about a week, and if things don't go right, I'll be there about an hour and a half.

I got my first break and became a singing waiter at eighteen or nineteen. I couldn't make a living at it. I quit. Then I got married and sold aluminum siding. My wife had problems physically. It was not good.

My wife isn't very bright. The other day she was at the store, and just as she was heading for our car, someone stole it! I said, "Did you see the guy that did it?" She said, "No, but I got the license plate."

I'll tell ya, I don't get no respect... The other day, I got back from a business trip. I got in a cab and said to the driver, "Hey! Take me to where the action is!" So ya know where he took me? He took me to my house!

I tell ya, I don't get no respect ... Last week, my wife told me that she was going to cut me down to twice a month. But I thought about it, and I figured that it wasn't too bad. I know a couple of guys that she cut out completely.

I went to see my doctor... Doctor Vidi-boom-ba. Yeah...I told him once, "Doctor, every morning when I get up and look in the mirror I feel like throwing up. What's wrong with me?" He said, "I don't know, but your eyesight is perfect."

I recently had double-bypass surgery. As they wheel you in, the doctor always gives you a last look. You know that look. That look of confidence to make you feel good. I always say to every doctor, If I don't make it, I'll never know it.

I tell ya, southern people, they always think you are hard-of-hearing. Every timr you leave they say to you, You come back, you hear? And southern people, they think you are horny too. You get directions, they say, Just up the road apiece.

We lived in a neighborhood that was too rich for us. When I was young, I had to deliver groceries to the homes of the kids I went to school with. I had to go to the back doors to make the deliveries. It was embarrassing. That was one thing out of a hundred.

A sense of humor is rare. It isn't telling a joke about how there are three ways to get to heaven. It's being in a restaurant and hearing someone say, Everyone's got their tale of woe, and then turning around and saying, Unfortunately, in life, there's more woe than tail.

When I was forty, I was getting divorced, living in a low-class, dirty hotel in New York. My mother was dying of cancer. I owed $20,000. That was about the lowest. I came back to show business, and I couldn't get a job. I was turned down by every small-time agent in New York.

When I got back into show business in 1961, I felt - for obvious reasons - that nothing in my life went right, and I realized that millions of people felt the same way. So when I first came back my catch phrase was "nothing goes right." Early on, that was my setup for a lot of jokes.

My boy is a mean kid. I came home the other day and saw him taping worms to the sidewalk, he sits there and watches the birds get hernias. Well, only last Christmas I gave him a B-B gun and he gave me a sweatshirt with a bulls-eye on the back. I told my kids, "Someday, you'll have kids of your own." One of them said, "So will you."

After I got divorced, I said to myself, I will never, ever get married again. It was in cement. I went through a really rough twenty-five years, but it happened again. I fell in love. I told her, Baby, I don't want a prenuptial agreement. This is it. Everyone told me I was nuts. Well, my new wife and I are married six years and we get along great. You can make anything work if you're both givers.

My life is nothing but pressure. All pressure. This pressure is like a heaviness. It's always on top of me, this heaviness. It's always there since I'm a kid. Other people wake up in the morning, 'A new day! Ah, up and at 'em!' I wake up, the heaviness is waiting for me nice. Sometimes I even talk to it. I say [adopts cheerful voice] 'Hi, heaviness!' and the heaviness looks back at me, [in an ominous growl] 'Today you're gonna get it good. You'll be drinking early today.'

I started over again with an image: Nothing goes right. Then when The Godfather came out, all I heard was, Show respect. With me, you show respect. So I changed the image to I don't get no respect. I tried it out in Greenwich Village. I remember the first joke I told: Even as a kid, I'd play hide and seek and the other kids wouldn't even look for me. The people laughed. After the show, they started saying to me, Me, too - I don't get no respect. I figured, let's try it again.

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