“Kids need a happy household. They need to be loved and supported in their dreams. And I don’t think you can make your kids’ dreams your own. They need you to support them in their dreams.”

You really have to have some muscle to be on the stage in front of the world.

We were in front of a live audience and I would be acting with the man who was playing my lover, and we used those words, and the audience would titter and laugh, and make me uncomfortable doing the scenes. …

I was introducing [director and producer] Hal Roach – Mr. Roach was 100 years old, he was one of the fathers of early days in films, he put Laurel with Hardy, he created the Our Gang kids, and all these silent movies he did – he was a giant.

I’d like to think there is a Heaven, and it starts from the happiest day in your life.

You have to really respect what your kids are doing with their kids and how they’re raising them. You can’t push your way into areas where you shouldn’t be saying anything.

I’ve always thought that the key to a good sex life is variety. That’s why God gave me two hands. Humans love sex, we need sex, it’s how we connect, it reminds us we’re alive, it’s the third most basic human need, after food and good movie popcorn.

I used to limp around my neighborhood imitating him. I did my Bar Mitzvah with an Oklahoma drawl.

There’s only, I think, in life, three things that I do pretty well: Performing, I still can field ground balls, and I make nice kids.

A laugh is a weird sound, and when you get a couple thousand people making it at once, it’s really strange. But when I can feel proud of myself for causing it, it’s great.

That’s why that show, no matter who hosts it, it really should be a fast-thinking comedian who is really quick on their feet that can handle situations that happen, or somebody with that kind of mentality that can capitalize on something.

You give up your dream, you give up.

It’s money. I remember it from when I was single

I’m a sucker for a free tuxedo.

I started examining history and then everything related to the theater. History, art, all the other studies, if I could link them into the theater, then it became alive for me. It just opened up my eyes.

Well, the way things are going, aside from wheat and auto parts, America’s biggest export is now the Oscar.

[I did impressions] of relatives because I heard so many different sounds. My dad was in the music business and of course my uncle was a giant [music producer], but my dad in particular had the house filled with these Dixieland jazz stars.

I was always into performing and dancing as a kid and acting was a safe place to have all my feelings, which is good as a child.

Rock and roll is – and should be – a kid’s place.

Those things don’t happen today. I feel sorry for the kids in the industry today. They have on sunglasses, eat caviar in jet planes, but they’ll never know the true feeling that we did.

I see the kids and I feel like taking them all away to a safe place to hide until the war stops and the hunger stops and El Cua becomes strong enough to give them the care they deserve.

It amazes me that parents are allowed to raise kids. There’s so much power and often very little accountability.

In my day, we didn’t have the cocaine, so we went out and knocked somebody over the head and took the money. But today, all this cocaine and crack, it doesn’t give kids a chance.

I work, and then I leave the office, and I’m with my kids and just sort of enjoy them on a visceral level, and I don’t feel like I’m exorcising my own deep ideas about parenthood and about how my life will come into play in my work.

At one point, my house was a school for autistic children. I opened up my doors to about 30 kids and their families at the time. I was turning into Mary Poppins because I had to do something for these kids who have nowhere to go. So my house was the school for two years.