I've had great success being a total idiot.
You can ask me anything you want. That doesn't mean I'm going to answer you.
We're leaving the House to people who either were born with a silver spoon in their mouth... or couldn't get better jobs in the first place.
A woman doing comedy doesn't offend me, but sets me back a bit. I, as a viewer, have trouble with it. I think of her as a producing machine that brings babies in the world.
I need the applause.
The young man who's had the Guggenheim fortune behind him all his life - he can hire all the authorities on the subject to teach him how to do a monologue, but he's never going to have the right stuff to pull it off. If he doesn't walk out onstage needing to walk out there, he doesn't have a dream of doing well.
I tell young comics, 'Do you want this badly enough? It's there. But you have to go get it. And if you think I'm going to give you the key to the lock of that door, there is no key, there is no lock, and there is no door.'
From 1936 on, I have taken more falls than any other 20 comedians put together. From the time I was 21, I've taken them on everything from clay courts to cement to wood floors, coming off pianos, going out a two-story window, landing on Dean, falling into the rough. You do that and you're gonna have problems.
I never tell an audience what they can expect. I never have and I never will. I'm an entertainer for 75 years.
When I hit around 65, 66, I started to feel tremendous worth and incredible personal esteem. I was becoming very cognisant of my contribution to the American spirit of helping your fellow man and all of the good stuff.
Don't you understand how dramatic it is to be a comic? To be a fool, to get people to laugh at this show-off? Milton Berle could take Laurence Olivier and stick him under the table if he wanted to. And so could I.
If you're an old pro, you know how well you're doing when you're doing it, and your inner government spanks you if you're not doing well.
I really am opinionated, but not for long. I have found myself coming off of what I think of something because the guy I'm talking to makes better sense than I am. I have so many points of view, I can't keep track of 'em, because I talk to too many people... I'm not so opinionated that I won't budge.
I've had the greatest respect for my work in this country by Americans. Critics have no brains.
People think I'm against critics because they are negative to my work. That's not what bothers me. What bothers me is they didn't see the work. I have seen critics print stuff about stuff I cut out of the film before we ran it. So don't tell me about critics.
I never got a formal education. So my intellect is my common sense. I don't have anything else going for me. And my common sense opens the door to instinct.
My family was as absolute as the work.Family was first always.
When you're doing a different kind of film, you have to bring a different kind of attitude; you have to bring a different kind of concentration.
When I'm working, I stay in ICU in any hospital that will get me a bed.
I never tell an audience what they can expect. I never have, and I never will.
I'm really not thick-skinned - my wife will tell you that I take sunsets personally - but I know that I've got the belly for whatever comes down the pike. I think it's tenacity. You've been there before, and you just have to recall, 'How did I handle that one?'
Turning 90 is not for sissies.
You would not believe some of the scripts I have seen. I have read something like 160 that I've rejected, and I keep them all, for posterity.
The film I did with Bobby De Niro, 'The King of Comedy' - an awful lot came to me out of that movie because De Niro never allowed me any room to be crazy. If I had tried to play it the way I would normally play it and get hysterical, Bobby would punch me.
I'm an unusual man. I know that.
I don't talk about anything negative.
When I arrived in Las Vegas, I felt I was embraced by it.
Billy Crystal, Steve Martin do wonderful things.
I was once six feet tall, but at 85, I'm now five feet four.
I almost resent being Charley Moviestar. Yeah, I'm grateful. But it takes me away from my kids.
An only child, I always wanted a large hug-house.
Getting attention is my business. My whole life's predicated on, 'Hey, look at me!'
Every day is another something that comes along.
I think it has helped that I am so curious about what has been happening to me and that I have enjoyed watching the changes through my life, you know? I didn't know what was going to happen to me next.
My dad was a stickler for teaching me the pratfall. There is something magical about taking a good fall, and when it works, when you get that laugh, there's no better feeling in the world.
I feel I have been a part of some very wonderful films, and I have had it in mind when I was on the set, every day, that what I am doing has meaning.
When I get an idea, I start to write like I was electrically motivated.
I like to watch all those shows that shouldn't be on the air - reality shows.
I want to know why the government of this country can't take care of the people who are keeping us safe?
I don't like any female comedians.
My God, the stage is the only place I know where to go.
When you get a question like, 'Did you like meeting Her Majesty?' 'No, I thought she was a slob.' I mean, what are you going to say... The mischief comes into me when I'm doing a Q&A, I'm 9 years old again. I don't get mad. I do get offended.
I believe when you go out there, you have a responsibility to deliver. I have old-fashioned thinking when I'm out there.
Seeing a woman project the kind of aggression that you have to project as a comic just rubs me wrong.
I started as a writer. I had the dumb act, but I made my living from writing.
When you're 89, dementia develops. I mean, I've told a story onstage, and I'm telling it with a full heart, and I forgot the damn punch line.
If I was performing, I had no pain. But you can't stay on stage 24 hours a day.
When you are debilitated, and you're very depressed, and you believe there's no hope, you cannot get a better potpourri of down.
My ego and my vanities have nothing to do with comedy.
I will not say anything negative about the president of the United States. I don't do that. And I don't allow my children to do that.
The beauty of love, as far as I'm concerned, is it makes you better. It makes you stronger. It gives you direction. It gives you understanding of what life is and what we've been given.
Most performers are used to the highs and the lows. If you can let a low stop you, that would be a sad commentary.
For a comic to put a public performance in jeopardy for a snickering little laugh - no, no, no, I don't believe in it.
There's nothing more dramatic than the comedy I've done. Because the comedy I've done is to get to the audience, get them to feel it, or they won't laugh.
You want to know why Barbra Streisand is so difficult? Because she's brilliant. She's a brilliant entertainer, she's a brilliant lady, and she's a wonderful human being, and the community doesn't like it.
You see, the people that have a point of view and have an opinion and have some intellect are dangerous in the film community - they're dangerous.
I think so much in time. I always have. Even at 20, I thought in terms of time, that I don't have a lot of time left. And I want to do so many things.
Commercial television has underestimated the intelligence of the public.
The people at Columbia Pictures have been great, but I had to tell them, 'Please don't be nice to me. Just pay me.'
What happens at 90 is that I don't walk so good, my eyes are going, I can't hear well, and I'm getting all of the 90s residuals.
There's something wonderful about taking a tag off a pair of socks, off a shirt, off a jacket. I really think that it has to do with my wanting to give myself all the perks that there are. It's part of my psychosis.
Most people are embarrassed to admit there's another human being that's in control of them, that your heart beats three times as fast because you've given yourself to someone else.
Red is uplifting.
I go where the action is.
I would not want to do one-episode television - that's just a brief encounter with your audience. The arc takes the actor into an arena where he can really stretch.
I'm shocked to be saying this, but as a child, I never went to a circus. It cost too much.
The greatest thing I can remember in my whole career was the Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey clowns asking me to appear with them at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles in 1965.
When I was young, I wasn't disciplined at all.
Going unnoticed has never been my strong suit.
I've never been more than 9 years old.
I dream in color.
I almost get annoyed at the fact that I'm not going to use all that I got.
I got the 'Max Rose' script, and I fell in love with it. It just hit me. It was something that needed to be made.
To ask a pratfall comedian, a dishes-in-the-face comic like me, to lay back and bring none of that stuff to the script because it doesn't call for it? That's tough.
The connection between pathos and broad comedy is very tight. But you do far more work in a comedy scene than you do in a straight scene. It's much harder.
I learned from my dad that when you walk in front of an audience, they are the kings and queens, and you're but the jester.
I can't stand to ask anyone, 'How was that?'
Interviews are vital, but you cannot allow an interviewer to take your life and disturb it.
You can't hold comedy back, because it needs to be exposed.
I make sure that I take good care of me.
What's happened at 85 is I've lost my appetite. I used to be a little hog when I was young. But now I really don't seem to need it.
Being 90 is not simple, but it's interesting, very interesting. Before I was 90, I could walk, I could see well, I could hear terrific, and now, I can't hear or see or walk.
Love is what makes you dream, and love is what makes you want to get up in the morning. Love is something that you want to be a part of because it makes you better.
I never stop working.
I'm always thinking about future projects and at the same time trying to finish the project you're in the middle off.
My Judaism has always been a great pride with me.
I have a loyalty that runs in my bloodstream, when I lock into someone or something, you can't get me away from it because I commit that thoroughly. That's in friendship, that's a deal, that's a commitment. Don't give me paper - I can get the same lawyer who drew it up to break it. But if you shake my hand, that's for life.
Adrenaline is wonderful. It covers pain. It covers dementia. It covers everything.
Adrenaline is so strong that none of us understand it.
It'll keep you alive for another 10 years if you get yourself a laugh once a day: either provoke it, or look around in the wildest laboratory in the world, the public.
I say to everybody, love is what wakes you up in the morning, love is what makes you walk, and love is what makes you hope.
Nothing can stop anyone who has a love and passion about their work.
I'm really, basically, nine, and I've always been that. I've never, ever allowed the child within me to die.
I am probably the most selfish man you will ever meet in your life. No one gets the satisfaction or the joy that I get out of seeing kids realize there is hope.
A lot of people resent that I've been in someone's life for 50 years. Why shouldn't people have an affection for me and what I've done? Didn't I have to be genuine for them to buy into what I did? There are children who grow up today who will not have that when they're 55 years old. With whom will they have it? Name an example for me.
God hadn't made me handsome, but he'd given me something, I always felt: funny bones.
You can't be faulted for being selfish if you're going to get better because of it.
Postwar America was a very buttoned-up nation. Radio shows were run by censors, Presidents wore hats, ladies wore girdles. We came straight out of the blue - nobody was expecting anything like Martin and Lewis. A sexy guy and a monkey is how some people saw us.
I think the cartoons that they're children are watching, particularly 'The Simpsons,' they're OK. I think that the adult audience is making much too much of the danger that they imply. That's not the case. The danger for children today, honey, is the news. Keep them away from news on television.
That never stops. That's what drives you: the joy and excitement of doing what you love.
You think about getting old, but when you get there, it's not what you thought it would be.
I don't want to be remembered. I want the nice words when I can hear them.
