Dick Van Dyke

I've been talking about retiring for years. It's my standard answer to the question, 'What are your future plans?' The truth is, I'll always want to do things that are worthwhile or fun.

All of us involved say 'The Dick Van Dyke Show' was the best five years of our lives. We were like otters at play.

I'm the Steven Spielberg of Malibu.

Here's the truth. Your teens and twenties are your Plan A. At 50, you're assessing whether Plan B or Plan C or any of the other plans you hatched actually worked. Your sixties and seventies, they're an improvisation.

I have four kids, seven grandkids, and four great-grandkids. Maybe I can become a great-great-grandfather if I hang on!

I don't have any children, I have four middle-aged people.

I'm always announcing my retirement. I'm still not retired.

I wanted to be Stan Laurel, then I wanted to be Fred Astaire and then Captain Kangaroo. I actually started out as a radio announcer when I was 17 and never left the business, so that's literally 70 years.

I got into a Broadway show before I ever sang and danced. I learned how after I got in the show.

When I was a kid, I loved all the silent comedians - Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, Chaplin. And I used to imitate them. I'd go to see a Buster Keaton movie and come home and try things out I'd seen. I learned to do pratfalls when I was very young.

A lot of violence, a lot of gore in it, and I just didn't want to do that kind of thing.

I swim, go to the gym, and do a little dancing every day and a little singing.

I've won several Emmys, a Tony and a Grammy, so maybe somebody will let me have an Oscar, and then I'll have a full set.

I loved to fall down.

I think, the 'Van Dyke Show' and 'Mary Poppins' are two of the best periods of my life. I had so much fun, I didn't want it to end.

Don't worry so much. Most of the things you worry about never end up happening.

I'm a very neat person.

I'm kind of proud of being a love child.

Just knowing you don't have the answers is a recipe for humility, openness, acceptance, forgiveness, and an eagerness to learn - and those are all good things.

In Bernie Sanders, I see a man saying that the emperor has no clothes while everyone around him insists they see clothes. Whether or not he makes it to the White House, I hope and pray that everyone hears the alarm he is sounding now; it may be the last voice we ever hear.

The Horny Toad in Cave Creek has great food. When I'm in Arizona, I have at least one meal there. I have a daughter who lives out there, and Dee Dee Wood, who was the choreographer on 'Mary Poppins,' lives out there. I still get out there once in a while, but not in the summer.

A lot of actors seem to dislike typecasting these days. The funny thing is, that's a fairly recent development. It used to be that actors wanted to be typecast so audiences could remember them and identify with them.

I did a 'Golden Girls' once, which shot in front of an audience, and that went well. I had a good time. But I need an audience, for comedy at least.

Today, if you're not an alcoholic, you're nobody.

I have a beautiful, young wife who sings and dances, so there's a lot of duetting going on at my house.

I like 'The Office.' I particularly like the British version with Ricky Gervais. Of course, I liked the 'Seinfeld' show a lot. I thought that was an awfully good show.

I think the saddest moment in my life just happened two months ago. My old nightclub partner passed away, Phil Erickson down in Atlanta. He - I owe him everything. He put me in the business and taught me about everything I know.

I can't work with my brother without laughing.

Women will never be as successful as men because they have no wives to advise them.

I do miss the rhythms of comedy. And I've never been able to perform very well without an audience. The sitcoms I've done had them. It was like doing a little play.

There's a lot of very funny people I'd love to work with that I've never met, of course. I love Steve Martin and Jim Carrey.

Jon Stewart kills me. I love him. And Bill Maher. He does an hour on HBO. But entirely political. It is awfully rough, but he does make me laugh.

I went from my mother to my wife. And to this day, I can't bear to be alone.

I have a lot of friends who say that one of the freedoms of being older is you don't care what other people think, which I don't think is right. You care what other people think, but if you're comfortable in your own skin, that doesn't bother you.

I wanted to be a radio announcer.

I was a 'Laurel and Hardy' nut. I got to know Laurel at the end of his life, and it was a great thrill for me. He left me his bow tie and derby and told me that if they ever made a movie about him, he'd want me to play him.

When I get some budding young comic who'll come up to me and say, 'What was it like to do it in those days?' I try to be as gracious to him as Stan Laurel was to me.

Oh, I had an idea for a pilot of my own at the time, and then Carl sent me about eight scripts and simply I threw my idea out the window because the writing was just so good.

My wife didn't like Hollywood or its stars, but she made an exception when, in 1972, we were invited to dinner - cooked by Frank Sinatra.

I've retired so many times now it's getting to be a habit.

In the best of all worlds, the producers would take some responsibility for the kinds of things they're putting out. Unfortunately, they don't.

I'm not a loner. I have to have a life partner.

I get little kids who recognize me from 'Mary Poppins,' and it just delights me because it's our third generation.

I cannot tell you what it means when children recognize. This is about the third generation for me. And when kids that small recognize me, it really pleases me, very gratifying.

I was the class clown, you know, that kind of thing, and I gathered around me a group of guys who also were silly. I was in all the plays and everything. But I don't know, at that time show businesses looked like the moon, you know, it was so far away. I wanted to be a radio announcer.

I never had a lot of drive, but because I had family responsibilities, I had a lot of tenacity - the tenacity of a drowning man.

Everyone should dance. And everyone should sing. People say, 'Well, I can't sing.' Everybody can sing. That you do it badly is no reason not to sing.

Stan said he used to keep Hardy late, make him miss his golf game, and really get him mad.

'Mary Poppins' was one of the best experiences of my life.

No, I did night clubs right here in Los Angeles. My partner, Phil Erickson, put me in the business, a guy from my home town, a dear friend who we just lost a couple of months ago.

When I auditioned for 'Bye Bye Birdie' on Broadway, Gower Champion said, 'You've got the job!' I said, 'Mr. Champion, I can't dance.' He said, 'We'll teach you what you need to know.'

I have four children and I have seven grandkids.

In my seventies, I exercised to stay ambulatory. In my eighties, I exercise to avoid assisted living.

I was lucky to get the kinds of parts I wanted. I always said I didn't want to do anything my kids can't see.

I was always in show business but in many ways was not really of show business. I didn't move in show business circles, particularly, still don't do it.

I don't play golf. I have more fun singing and dancing.

I never had a lot of confidence in myself.

I married somebody half my age, and everybody thought I was crazy, but she is just an absolute angel.

So I think we're kind of an alternate choice for people who have had it with sex and violence.

I've had a lot of writers, in particular, who said they got into writing because of the 'Van Dyke Show.' They said it looked like fun.

Once you're dead, your worries are over.

The thing I'm most proud of is my family, the way they've turned out.

Divorce is something that I never dreamed would happen to me. But it did.

I've always been a bit of an orphan, because actors say, 'Well, he's more of a dancer.' And dancers say, 'No. He's really a singer.' And singers say, 'No. He's an actor.'

I don't have any children; I have four middle-aged people.

It's more in my nature to be optimistic, I think. I'm one of those people who gets up on the right side of the bed in the morning.

Rob Petrie is who I really am - in personality and general ineffectiveness.

I was the worst game show host that ever lived, and I knew it.

For some reason, as time gets short in life, wasting time escaping through entertainment bothers me.

My brother and I laughed a lot as kids. We came up in the middle of the Depression, and neither one of us knew we were poor. We had nothing, but we didn't know it.

As wonderful as they were, my parents didn't teach me anything about self-discipline, concentration, patience, or focus. If I hadn't had a family myself, I probably never would've done anything. Marriage taught me responsibility.

The years have been just full of surprises for me, and a lot of fun.

Probably one of the happiest moments, outside the birth of all of my kids, was the first time we won an Emmy, that the show won an Emmy. That was a big night.

I grew up in Danville, Illinois, right in the middle of the state.

Somebody asked what I wanted on my gravestone. I'm just going to put: 'Glad I Could Help.'

When I was a kid, I had ambitions for being a television announcer, which was before television took off, you know, in the late '40s. And just through necessity, going out looking for work, I was starting to sing, and dance, and act, and I never expected to do that, nor to have any success at it at least.

Put me on solid ground and I'll start tapping! At my age they say to keep moving.

I'm really in retirement. My career is over. I'm just playing now and having a great time. I like to keep busy, and I'm doing what's fun for me.

My son Barry, of course, has been on from the beginning. And his son Shane is playing now a med student regularly on the show. And at one point or another, I've had all four of his kids on the show.

Television's going, as far as I'm concerned, downhill, and I'm an anachronism.

You can spread jelly on the peanut butter but you can't spread peanut butter on the jelly.

My life has been a magnificent indulgence.

My career is over. I'm just playing now and having a great time. I like to keep busy, and I'm doing what's fun for me.

All that nipping and tucking doesn't make you look younger - only stranger.

The secret to keeping moving is keeping moving.

But once we got on the air, everybody except Morey Amsterdam pretty much stuck to the script.

When I started having kids, I thought, 'I don't want to do anything they can't watch.'

So as my kids will tell you, they had a pretty normal life.

Bob Hope, like Mark Twain, had a sense of humor that was uniquely American, and like Twain, we'll likely not see another like him.

Unfortunately, the spouses of performers have a terrible, terrible life. They get shunted aside, pushed aside, ignored.

No, no, it was the relationships. That was that group. People believed that Rob and Laura were really married in real life. You know, a lot of people believed that.

Working with my son was like falling off a log. I had so much fun doing it.

My favorite unknown movie is 'The Comic.'

'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' was a movie that I repeatedly turned down. The movie's producer, Albert 'Cubby' Broccoli, known for his tight-fisted control of the James Bond movie franchise, desperately wanted to re-team Julie Andrews and me after the success we'd enjoyed with 'Mary Poppins.'

I sing and dance. That's my job.

But I wish they would make a musical of some kind. I miss musicals so much. You don't see them anymore.

Do you know that I was the anchor on the 'CBS Morning Show?' And my newsman was Walter Cronkite.

I wrote a little autobiography about how luck has to do with everything. It's called 'My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business.' A publisher came to me and said, 'Write a book,' so I did. I wanted to call it 'Everybody Else Has Got a Book.'

Pandering to the scandal hungry public is a total lack of responsible journalism.

My wife, as proud as she was of me, hated show business for good reasons. There was something about the spouse always being pushed out of the way, shoved aside. She wanted to get away from it.