I was 23, and all sorts of people were coming in and out and watching me, like Steve Allen and Bette Midler. David Brenner certainly took me under his wing. To drive home to my little dump in New Jersey often knowing that Steve Allen said, 'You got it' - that validation kept me going in a big, big way.

I'm 70; I'm just glad I'm on top of the ground. Honest to God.

My grandmother was a Jewish juggler: she used to worry about six things at once.

My performance level has risen - and my anxiety-level has sky-rocketed.

I have no ambitions at all! I have none... seriously. I want to be a good father. I want to be a good husband. I want to be a good son, a good brother, a good family member. I don't have any ambition to direct a film or write a play. I like acting.

I have always been clear that cinema is not my priority and that my family is.

I grew up in a family that nearly lost everything, but I ended up in the United States Senate because I grew up in an America that invested in kids like me and built a real future for us.

All these walls that keep us from loving each other as one family or one race - racism, religion, where we grew up, whatever, class, socioeconomic - what makes us be so selfish and prideful, what keeps us from wanting to help the next man, what makes us be so focused on a personal legacy as opposed to the entire legacy of a race.