Moshe Kasher Quotes

The next thing most like living one's life over again seems to be a recollection of that life, and to make that recollection as durable as possible by putting it down in writing.

My books are written from personal experience, from memories, and from stories that come to me from all places.

That's the best advice I can give - when you're trying to write a comedy, first write a drama, and then make it funny.

Somebody said, "Well, you're going to write your definitive book about your life, biography." No, I'm not. I haven't done that. I wrote a book of letters which gives an insight into the real me as opposed to the public perceptions of me. But I'm convinced historians will figure out the things we got wrong and hopefully the things we got right.

Humor is a very big part of life, and if you exclude humor from your book, you're not capturing a very important part of human experience.

The urge to write one's autobiography, so I have been told, overtakes everyone sooner or later.

…my life has been a remarkable one. Maybe one day someone will write a book about me . . .” "I’ve never much cared for horror stories.

I've written a lot of autobiography, which also involved listening.

I don't read memoirs. But if you write a memoir, I would think you'd want people to know, "O.K., look, I've taken some liberties here." It's just a matter of being open with your readers.

If your life were a book, and you were the author, how would you want your story to go?

During the '80s I wrote Memoirs from the Women's Prison. This is one of my most important books. It came out in Arabic in '83. About my experience in prison.

If you're going to have a book full of clever people and nobody ever jokes, it's just not going to ring true to the reader. That said, humor writing is the hardest kind of writing there is.

The thing I try to get across to the writers - and I do a lot of writing, too - is that when I do stand-up, nothing I talk about is funny. Everything is really sad and tragic and then I make it funny.

We can only connect the dots we collect, which makes everything you write about you... your connections are the thread that you weave into the cloth that becomes the story that only you can tell.

Throughout my childhood, my parents dropped me off at a multitude of therapists' offices in hopes that I'd avoid growing up to be the kind of asshole who writes books about them. Also because it was sometimes easier than finding a nanny.

I could write an entirely new book about Andy Warhol, but I don't think I will. I certainly don't think Nancy Reagan would like that, as she's been patiently waiting for Volume 2 of my chronicle of the life of her and Ronnie.

As I get older and write more books I'm definitely allowing the humorous side of my personality more rein in my work.

I don't write jokes first. I write down topics. I think of what I want to talk about, and then I write the jokes - they don't write me... And even if you don't think it's funny, you won't think it's boring. You might disagree, but you'll listen. And maybe even laugh as you disagree.

I have begun writing what I have said I'd never write, a memoir ("I am not my own subject," I used to say with icy superiority).

I was kind of relieved with the way the book [The Proud Highway] came out. It's beyond an autobiography or a biography. I never knew what was going to come up next.

Admittedly, the masturbation story is just a "Hey, this is one of my best-of's, I'll throw it in the special." But the grandmother stuff, really, I feel like is part of the theme and part of the best way to end the story that I'm telling with the special.

The story of how I left Huckleberry begins -- as do all worthy stories -- with a goat

Usually the beginning of a story that people hear a lot. For example, "My girlfriend is upset about her new haircut" or "My dad keeps losing his car keys." And then I just think of different ways the story could end. "My girlfriend is upset about her new haircut. I don't understand why she's crying. I'm the one who has to get a new girlfriend." Then I try it out on stage. I don't do a lot of re-writing. My jokes either work or they don't. The trick is just to write a ton of jokes.

I'm writing a memoir. I'm four pages in. I start with my first memory, which is kicking my uncle in the balls. I was four.

I have no plans to write an autobiography, I will leave that to others. I'm sure they will turn me into a homosexual or a Nazi spy or something else.