“You have to hope that [good things] happen to you. […] That’s the only thing we really, surely have, is hope. You hope that you can be alive, that things will happen to you that you’ll actually witness, that you’ll participate in.”

I don’t answer fan mail. I don’t have time for that. It’s like hundreds of thousands of people who think they’re going to become millionaires getting autographs from movie actors. I don’t have time for those idiots. I’ve got stuff to do.

The atheists traditionally hold their conventions from Good Friday to Easter Sunday during the hours Christ spent in the grave.

I’d sort of gone through some sort of spiritual change in the late 70s where I sort of saw there was some other life to live. It changed the way that I worked just having a different presence and a different tension.

I think midlife crisis is just a point where people’s careers have reached some plateau and they have to reflect on their personal relationships.

When the phone started ringing too many times, I had to take it back to what I can handle. I take my chances on a job or a person as opposed to a situation. I don’t like to have a situation placed over my head.

Every moment that you share someone else’s pain, feel what they feel, makes you more human.

You know the theory of cell irritability? If you take an amoeba cell and poke it a thousand times, it will change and then re-form into its original shape. And then, the thousandth time you poke this amoeba.

Just beat my record for most consecutive days without dying.

To people who want to be rich and famous, I’d say, “Get rich first and see if that doesn’t cover it.”

I think we’re all sort of imprisoned by – or at least bound to – the choices we make… You want to say no at the right time and you want to say yes more sparingly.

He’s going on and on and on, and finally he stops. It’s just total horror, and the camera’s still rolling. You can hear it, sort of a grinding noise. And the director says, “Anything else, Bud?”

Buddy Hackett [was] talking – this is Hackett, not me – about the Virgin Mary, a limerick sort of thing, and all these children and families … the look of absolute horror.

You can handle just about anything that comes at you out on the road with a believable grin, common sense and whiskey.

Now, for some of you it doesn’t matter. You were born rich and you’re going to stay rich. But here’s my advice to the rest of you.

I was in the Virgin Islands once. I met a girl. We ate lobster, drank piña coladas. At sunset, we made love like sea otters. That was a pretty good day. Why couldn’t I get that day over and over and over?

Whenever I think of the high salaries we are paid as film actors, I think it is for the travel, the time away, and any trouble you get into through being well known. It’s not for the acting, that’s for sure.