If my father had hugged me even once, I'd be an accountant right now.
Ray Romano
I do what I do because I love it.
Everyone should have kids. They are the greatest joy in the world. But they are also terrorists. You'll realize this as soon as they're born, and they start using sleep deprivation to break you.
Whenever I walk off the golf course, I thank God that I'm able to tell a joke. I thank God I'm good at something.
In school, I wasn't a very good student - I was very irresponsible and never did the studying but always liked to get the laugh.
The comics that are just conversing with you up there and drawing on their own life, yeah, I guess so. I guess some do political humor, some do topical humor, but the ones that I like, the ones that are appealing to me, were guys who were just talking to you about their life.
I feel like this is a dream - and I apologize for how I dressed some of you.
I realized I need to work. I need to be creative. As much as I have angst and anxiety, when I'm idle, it's even more. I have to keep moving. Otherwise, I catch up with myself.
The first time I played golf was in Flushing Meadows, Queens, when I was about 16 or 17. They had an 18-hole pitch-and-putt. My buddies and I would hop the fence and sneak on and play.
You know, before I would think, my cab driver hates me. Now I think my limo driver hates me.
I still feel like an immature idiot inside, but I look in the mirror and - as a friend of mine once said- this old guy keeps getting in the way.
I'm always giving myself the Alzheimer's test. My shrink told me to do this. It takes one minute. You name every word that comes to mind that begins with the letter F.
My joke used to be about my father and Peter Boyle: that anything you see Peter Boyle do on TV, my father has done in real life without pants on.
I was wracked with insecurity.
I don't watch 'Mad Men.'
I remember I did the movie 'Eulogy,' and there was a dramatic moment in it. It was pretty heavy, and I went for it. It was... I didn't feel that comfortable doing it.
Right after 'Raymond' I had a world-is-my-oyster attitude, but I found out I don't like oysters. I had this existential emptiness. 'What is my purpose? Who am I?' I had a big identity crisis.
If golf wasn't enjoyable and there wasn't a lot of humor and enjoyment, even though the game is so frustrating, you would wonder why you put yourself through it.
Every backstory involves my father. I remember hearing Gary Oldman talking about backstories and saying, 'I got to stop using my father...' And I feel the same way. I don't know. What I come up with always involves some element of this son trying to prove himself to his father.
People are going to see both of us and think it's an Abbott and Costello kind of thing. It's not an easy switch. It's not an easy transition from TV to film.
I want to do well and I want to fit in.
As successful as it may appear I am, I don't really feel that. It's like, you know you've achieved some level of success, and you know what you've done, and yet you still feel you have more to do and more to prove.
My hair was long - in my high school year book, I looked like an ugly David Cassidy.
I'm from New York.
I'm a little different from the average dude because I'm on high-def TV now.
When I started out, Jay Leno used to say you're not as good as you think you can be until at least your sixth year. I was like, what the hell is he talking about? 'Cause I was in my third year, and I thought, 'I got this.' I kept videos of myself performing, and in my fifth year I watched my third year and realized he couldn't have been more right.
Each day it's like: 'How many more days am I going to feel young and vibrant? I feel young and vibrant now, but I also feel the aches and pains a little bit.
I like a good cry - it's cathartic; it's a release. But I've never been able to be so free to do that on camera the way some actors can.
My favorite band - and Bobby Cannavale and Terry Winter have already made fun of me for this - is Chicago.
I have some classes in accounting, but I don't know anything about accounting. I - you know, when my accountant tells me all the things he does, it's a foreign language to me.
I don't get sick.
When you go to standup, there seems to be a common denominator of some form of need or want for validation from the audience that maybe you were lacking as a kid.
I'm aging, and the world is seeing it.
I don't want to be a spokesman for family values, but that's the way my standup is perceived.
Doris Roberts had an energy and a spirit that amazed me. She never stopped. Whether working professionally or with her many charities or just nurturing and mentoring a green young comic trying to make it as an actor, she did everything with such a grand love for life and people, and I will miss her dearly.
You're only as good as your last joke, your last show, your last whatever. The confidence is there, but underneath, there is always insecurity.
My wife gets all the money I make. I just get an apple and clean clothes every morning.
I like doing film, you know, single-camera.
I still do standup.
I love standup and I haven't given it up.
I just go to work, come home. And my wife lets me throw my clothes on the floor, and she doesn't say anything, so I must be making some money.
I think that as actors age, the work becomes more organic to them.
The best comedy, I feel, comes in a drama because it balances each other out.
I would get my student loans, get money, register and never really go. It was a system I thought would somehow pan out.
If I'm really considering doing film from now on then that is the smart thing to do, or you can go either way. You can just do the same character over and over again and make a different comedy like over and over again.
I have the show because I'm insecure. It's my insecurity that makes me want to be a comic, that makes me need the audience.
You don't want to shock them and do something totally opposite, but you also want to play a different character.
It seems to be a common denominator with a lot of comics, this low self-esteem thing.
It's my insecurity that makes me want to be a comic, that makes me need the audience.
I've always wondered, what am I going to do that's important with these stupid jokes that I tell.
