Carol Burnett

I never regretted turning down anything, I never regretted losing a job because I always felt something else was out there.

We don't stop going to school when we graduate.

I'm really not that funny in real life! But I am the best audience one could find. I love to laugh.

I'm glad I was born when I was. My time was the golden age of variety. If I were starting out again now, maybe things would happen for me, but it certainly would not be on a variety show with 28 musicians, 12 dancers, two major guest stars, 50 costumes a week by Bob Mackie. The networks just wouldn't spend the money today.

I don't have false teeth. Do you think I'd buy teeth like these?

On the good days, my mother would haul out the ukulele and we'd sit around the kitchen table - it was a cardboard table with a linoleum top - and sing.

Celebrity was a long time in coming; it will go away. Everything goes away.

I'm not always optimistic. You wouldn't have all cylinders cooking if you were always like Mary Poppins.

It's also selfish because it makes you feel good when you help others. I've been helped by acts of kindness from strangers. That's why we're here, after all, to help others.

Everybody I know who is funny, it's in them. You can teach timing, or some people are able to tell a joke, though I don't like to tell jokes. But I think you have to be born with a sense of humor and a sense of timing.

When you have a dream, you've got to grab it and never let go.

I wish my mother had left me something about how she felt growing up. I wish my grandmother had done the same. I wanted my girls to know me.

My grandmother and I would go see movies, and we'd come back to the apartment - we had a one-room apartment in Hollywood - and I would kind of lock myself in this little dressing room area with a cracked mirror on the door and act out what I had just seen.

Having a baby is like taking your lower lip and forcing it over your head.

My interesting diet tips are eat early and don't nosh between meals. I mean, I can pack it away.

Comedy is tragedy - plus time.

I liked myself better when I wasn't me.

It's almost impossible to be funnier than the people in Washington.

Its also selfish because it makes you feel good when you help others. Ive been helped by acts of kindness from strangers. Thats why were here after all to help others.

My grandmother and I followed my mother here, to a house a block north of Hollywood Boulevard but a million miles away from Hollywood, if you know what I mean. We would hang out behind the ropes and look at the movie stars arriving at the premieres.

Adolescence is just one big walking pimple.

But I don't begrudge anybody, because I know how hard it is to have that dream and to make it happen, whether or not it's just to put a roof over your head and food on the table.

I think the hardest thing to do in the world, show-business-wise, is write comedy.

I was once asked to do my Tarzan yell at Bergdorf Goodman, and a guard burst in with a gun! Now I only do it under controlled circumstances.

Giving birth is like taking your lower lip and forcing it over your head.

Because nobody goes through life without a scar.

You know, one wonderful thing that came out of my Enquirer experience is that, in my case, it was ruled tabloids are magazines. Which means they didn't have the protection that a newspaper has.

My grandmother and I saw an average of eight movies a week, double features, second run.

Well, I don't know how astute I am, but I did want to be a journalist when I was growing up.

But I didn't ask to have somebody nose around in my private life. I didn't even ask to be famous. All I asked was to be able to earn a living making people laugh.

Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.

It costs a lot to sue a magazine, and it's too bad that we don't have a system where the losing team has to pay the winning team's lawyers.

I have always grown from my problems and challenges from the things that dont work out thats when Ive really learned.

Comedy is tragedy plus time.

I don't eat much meat, fish, or poultry.

Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own.

When things are a disappointment try not to be so discouraged.

We dont stop going to school when we graduate.

You have to go through the falling down in order to learn to walk. It helps to know that you can survive it. That's an education in itself.

Originally, I came from Texas, and we lived on - I guess you'd call it welfare, what we called relief.