Talent can be developed, gift is God-given. But artists have both.

Sheer flattery got me into the theater. Flattery always works with me, particularly the flattery of women.

Both my brothers became physicians and I, of course, wandered into a business where the undisciplined are welcome.

I have heard show business characterized as a refuge for childlike persons in flight from all things harsh and real.

Nations have come under the control of haters and fools.

Talent can be developed, gift is God-given. But artists have both.

Those offers come in now and again. They're not knocking down my door. I'm only an old character actor, and I'm not needed.

Half the pictures directed by men of reputation fail.

One irreducible residual of 38 years in the business is the number of lasting, loving friendships I have made.

In a capitalist society, persons who create capital, like Michael Eisner, are given the staggering rewards.

It seems that entertainment is what most excites us and what we value above everything else.

My Irish derivation has nothing to do with me. Why should it?

Conventional show-biz savvy held that Americans hated to be the objects of satire.

Vulgar and obscene, the papers run rumors daily about people in show business, tales of wicked ways and witless affairs.

My professional life in Hollywood has been filled with joy and laughter.

The wages of pedantry is pain.

I'm lucky. Lord, I'm lucky.

Not all celebrities are dunces.

I enjoyed in every way my 12 years of playing Archie, and I wasn't personally sad about finishing a long job.

I hate pride, but if I were going to be proud of anything it would have to be something I'd done myself. Race pride is kind of stupid.

Millions of people thought Archie was a happy hero.

The reviewer is a singularly detested enemy because he is, unlike the hapless artist, invulnerable.

All in the Family was intellectual; it was art.

It was a lack of system that made the '30s Depression as inevitable as all others previously suffered.

We don't really need reviewers, just first-night reporters who will tell us faithfully whether or not the audience liked the show.

I've run into some S.O.B. directors, but I gave them back as good as I got.

I do talk less now because the sound of my voice saying over and over the things I said years ago embarrasses and depresses me. Why do I say the same things over and over?

Even a true artist does not always produce art.

Some people thought we were presenting Archie as a false character. President Nixon thought we were making a fool out of a good man.

But I found a lot of artists at the Cedar Bar were difficult for me to talk to.

Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will-whatever we may think.

I got to sit down with people who I admired, and have conversations with some of the greatest thinkers and artists and performers. It's a huge privilege for me to be a journalist.

I don't believe in art. I believe in artists.

David Cronenberg knows what we actors do as artists.

The truth is, we haven't really figured out yet how artists are going to thrive in modern mass societies. We're all experiments.

Many of the artists who have represented Negro life have seen only the comic, ludicrous side of it, and have lacked sympathy with and appreciation for the warm big heart that dwells within such a rough exterior.

A great thing happening now in art is that artists are using the figure, the body, clothing, life.

The number of contemporary artists who appeal to me is infinitesimal.

I have to plead basic ignorance of most new jazz artists here.

Music is art, art is life, and we are who we are, and all of these aforementioned women, unless they should choose not to, will be performing well into the next many decades because they are great artists.

Because when the film was first mooted, the Beatles didn't like the idea at all. In fact they wouldn't have any part in it. And when Brian had committed them, it was part of a deal he did with United Artists, I think.

Artists are like everybody else.

When artists make art, they shouldn't question whether it is permissible to do one thing or another.

My proudest achievement has been the success of the shows and artists I have been involved with, because they were made in Britain.

The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one's obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all.

I didn't want to save art - I respected the older artists too much to think art needed saving. But I knew it was finished, even though, at that time, I didn't know what I would do.

Music is more emotional than prose, more revolutionary than poetry. I'm not saying I've got the answers, just a of questions that I don't hear other artists asking.

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

I've never understood why artists, who so often condescend to the cliches of their own culture, are so eager to embrace the cliches of cultures they know nothing about.