“Andy [Griffith] and I spoke on the phone not too long before he died. I told him I loved him and he told me he loved me. He was a wonderful man.”

Andy was always fun and liked to tease. Don was nothing like Barney. Don was very quiet, which shows what a good actor he was.

I still stay in touch with Elinor Donahue. I’ve known Elinor since she was 14-years-old.

One reason [of Andy Griffith Show popularity] is because of the formula. It had comedy, but it also had tender moments. The other reason is because it was therapeutic. It helped people relax and unwind.

Some months I don’t feel too good and I think maybe I won’t go, but then when I go and get to be there with so many wonderful people it always lifts my spirits and makes me feel better. I wouldn’t stand in line for hours to meet me, but I’m so glad my fans do.

I did appear on other popular TV shows, like Family Affair, My Three Sons, Barnaby Jones and Little House on the Prairie.

Twenty years after the Andy Griffith Show when Andy did Matlock, he hired me for four episodes. I told him I wanted to develop an Aunt Bea type role for Matlock, but he was against it.

I would do an episode in two days and I got paid $500. After all the federal, state and local taxes were taken out and then my agent’s commission I only got $200 some dollars per episode.

I think the show has so many wonderful memories connected to it for lots of people. When fans come to see me at the Andy Griffith Museum they get so emotional. Some of them cry, lots of them hug me and some want a kiss on the cheek.

Don Knotts left [Andy Griffith Show] to pursue a movie career, so once he was gone I left too.

I love to meet people for lunch at my favorite restaurant, the Loaded Goat. It is named after the Andy Griffith Show episode where a goat ate a bunch of dynamite.

Don Knotts won five Emmy Awards for Outstanding Performance in a Supporting Role by an Actor or Actress in a Series [in Andy Griffith Show] in 1961, 1962, 1963, 1966 and 1967.

I was under contract with Walt Disney at the time. I was co-starring in my second season of a show called, Texas John Slaughter. The Andy Griffith Show hired me to play Thelma Lou. I only worked when they called me.

They were all wonderful [on Andy Griffith Show], but I enjoyed Andy and Don and Ron the most. Ron played little Opie so well. He really took acting seriously and worked hard to deliver his lines well.

I think the sad fact is, there’s a long history in this country at looking at African-American as subhuman.

So long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer and courage, so long are you young. When your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then, and then only, are you grown old. And then, indeed as the ballad says, you just fade away

Fumes of wine shorten the long road.

It’s going to be fun to watch and see how long the meek can keep the earth once they inherit it.

I really feel the novel has certain conveniences about it and has something so fundamental about it you could almost say that as long as there is paper, there is going to be the novel.

There is not a right too long denied to which we do not aspire in order to achieve; there is not a wrong too long endured that we are not determined to abolish.

I went to South Africa on safari and came eye to eye with a beautiful leopard. We were so close; I was staring at him for a long time and I felt a recognition with my own nature.

Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100 per cent of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed.