If only my folks had beaten me, I could have gotten some material about my miserable childhood. But as it is, I've had a great life.

Actually, we've done 75 of these shows and every one of them has sold out. But then we buy all the tickets.

I figure you're only here for a matter of moments. Ever since I was a kid watching movies I've always wanted to make people laugh or have some sort of emotional reaction.

When I watch TV, I'm embarrassed by some of what's on.

I've known Harvey for over 40 years and I worked with him on the Burnett show for 11 years. I guess you could say we're about as close as you can get to being a comedy team.

I don't watch a lot of TV anymore. A lot of it isn't the kind of thing you can feel comfortable with watching with your kids. And I still feel that way even though, now, my kids are in their 30s.

Harvey never had an original idea or thought in his life. I was out wandering around the country doing charity benefits, mainly, when I asked him to come along.

My career is pretty much over. I'm out in the Valley eating soft-boiled eggs.

Don Knotts was a really big influence, especially on the Steve Allen show. I mean, look at the guy, his entire life is in his face.

You can't TV surf without coming across an Andy of Mayberry episode where you've just got to watch Don as Barney. That's why I put Don in several of my movies.

People enjoy sitting back knowing they won't hear a lot of four-letter words.

We kept a broad audience, and we didn't make fun of people who had necessarily made mistakes in their life and burned them to the ground. We made fun of a commercial or a movie or ourselves.

As a kid I was short and only weighed 95 pounds. And though I was active in a lot of Sports and got along with most of the guys, I think I used comedy as a defense mechanism. You know making someone laugh is a much better way to solve a problem than by using your fists.

If only my folks had beaten me, I could have gotten some material about my miserable childhood. But as it is, I've had a great life.

I like to work a lot with wood. I make furniture that falls apart. I also sew.

I've never really taken anything very seriously. I enjoy life because I enjoy making other people enjoy it.

Nowadays they have 12 directors and 15 producers and 30 writers. And all the writers want their lines said a certain way-which isn't necessarily funny. I mean the lines aren't necessarily so funny to begin with.

At first I wanted to be a jockey. I rode horses in Cleveland but I kept falling off and I was afraid of horses. So there wasn't much of a future in it.

A lot of people like to live on laurels that happened 20 or 30 years ago, but it's nice to get awards. It's nice to be labeled and things like that, but I'm not sure everybody qualifies.

I avoid all the language and nudity and violence and everything. I have enough of that at home.

I have a lot of awards in my house that I have absolutely no idea what they are for.

I think there are a lot of things out there that are humorous that people don't realize until you actually show them what is going on. Saran Wrap for one thing. You know, you could pull enough of that out of the box and it will actually kill you. It will get a hold of you, stick to you, and choke you to death.

I was dyslexic - was, still am - 'cause I would see words that weren't there. And people just started laughing, and I thought, well, this is a good way to make a living. I'll just go downtown to read and have people laugh, you know?

If I wouldn't offend my religion or God, why would I want to offend an audience because in effect those people are being watched over by the same person.

My parents were very funny - they didn't know it. But they were. They were actually sharing an IQ.

The reason 'The Carol Burnett Show' did so well in the ratings is because people were looking for that comfort zone when the whole family sat around and watched television and enjoyed it.

When you're small, you either are funny, or you get beat up a lot.

A sister is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost.

A lot of people have gotten into comedy because of certain influences in their lives or events that were painful, and I really have wracked my brain to figure it out. I pretty much have had a normal childhood. Maybe it was too normal.

It sounds ideal, a sort of beach childhood. But it wasn't really. I didn't use the beach very much at all.

All our pursuits, from childhood to manhood, are only trifles of different sorts and sizes, proportioned to our years and views.

The secret of the truly successful, I believe, is that they learned very early in life how not to be busy. They saw through that adage, repeated to me so often in childhood, that anything worth doing is worth doing well.

I don't carry any early childhood trauma around with me, if that's what you're hinting at. The story of the bicycles - and there were three of them which were stolen from me - I've dealt with it well.

Remember Graham Green's dictum that childhood is the bank balance of the writer? I think that all writers feel alienated. Most of us go back to an alienated childhood in some way or another. I know that I do.

Hors d'oeuvres have always a pathetic interest for me; they remind me of one's childhood that one goes through wondering what the next course is going to be like - and during the rest of the menu one wishes one had eaten more of the hors d'oeuvres.

Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist.

Everything I write comes from my childhood in one way or another. I am forever drawing on the sense of mystery and wonder and possibility that pervaded that time of my life.

Well I was an asthmatic child. So that for most of my childhood I was in bed. Bedridden.

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!

I think actors always retain one foot in the cradle. We're switched on to our youth, to our childhood. We have to be because we're in the business of transferring emotions to other people.

If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood.

I had a kind of Dickensian childhood.

Friendships in childhood are usually a matter of chance, whereas in adolescence they are most often a matter of choice.

I didn't have a happy childhood.

These days, there are a great many books about childhood trauma and its effects, but at the time all the experts agreed that one should forget about it as quickly as possible and pick up where you left off.

Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood.

My whole family actually, but my parents. I had such a normal and amazing childhood. I've been so lucky. My parents are cool and normal. They don't talk about the business and I still have stuff to do at their house.

From childhood I was passionately fond of music and wanted to be a musician. I have no recollection of any real desire ever to be anything else.

I gave up my childhood for a career.