“You can always tell about somebody by the way they put their hands on an animal.”

I don’t get political.

I may be a senior, but so what? I’m still hot.

I have my golden retriever now, Pontiac. He’s a career-change guide dog from Guide Dogs for the Blind.

I just want to bring as much natural as I can. I’m not saying that people who take acting lessons are false. They’re much better than I am, but it doesn’t work for me.

I’m in the middle of my sixth book, which is about animals at the Los Angeles Zoo.

I’m a big cockeyed optimist. I try to accentuate the positive as opposed to the negative.

I am the luckiest old broad on two feet if the truth were known. It’s – but it all goes back to ‘Mary Tyler Moore,’ ‘Golden Girls,’ all those – actors love to take the credit. We couldn’t do it without the writers.

I don’t care who anybody sleeps with. If a couple has been together all that time – and there are gay relationships that are more solid than some heterosexual ones – I think it’s fine if they want to get married. I don’t know how people can get so anti-something.

I cannot stand the people who get wonderful starts in show business and who abuse it. Lindsay Lohan and Charlie Sheen, for example, although there are plenty of others, too. They are the most blessed people in the world, and they don’t appreciate it.

I think it’s your mental attitude. So many of us start dreading age in high school and that’s a waste of a lovely life. ‘Oh… I’m 30, oh, I’m 40, oh, 50.’ Make the most of it.

You know what the problem that animal activists sometimes have? They only concentrate on the heartbreaking things to the point where the general public thinks, ‘Oh, here comes those animal folks again and I’m going to hear all the things I don’t want to hear.’

Animals don’t lie. Animals don’t criticize. If animals have moody days, they handle them better than humans do.

I was an only child and I had a mother and father who were just – there wasn’t a straight man in the house, and I mean that in a very nice way. They were fun, and we would laugh a lot.

A good friend of mine was Lucy Ball. Her mother and my mother were best friends.

Wendy Malick and Valerie Bertinelli make fun of me, but I take care of my health – I don’t abuse it.

I’m having the time of my life and the fact that I’m still working – how lucky can you get? I’m 90 years old and still able to work as much as I do. That’s a privilege.