“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.”

I think all phases of one’s career are serious if you take it seriously no matter if you are doing high profile dramatic pieces or not.

While I have felt lonely many times in my life, the oddest feeling of all was after my mother, Lucille, died. My father had already died, but I always had some attachment to our big family while she was alive. It seems strange to say now that I felt so lonely, yet I did.

I know how to be sour. I know that taste.

I met a woman who photographed celebrity dogs for a book, and she told me that Ralph Lauren’s dog is named Rugby. I said, Yeah, but his real name is Stickball.

Every day, he was talking to the studio about this helicopter shot.

Disneyland. The world’s biggest people trap, built by a mouse.

Those are my people, you know? The ones who are going to crash and burn.

The more relaxed you are, the better you are at everything.

Everybody had some sort of vision problem, some sort of damage – I had to bury myself in my napkin.

When I feel like I’m stuck, I do something – not like I’m Mother Teresa or anything, but there’s someone that’s forgotten about in your life, all the time. Someone that could use an ‘Attaboy’ or a ‘How you doin’ out there.

Now, the essence, the very spirit of Christmas is that we first make believe a thing is so, and lo, it presently turns out to be so. – Stephen Leacockof Christmas trees around the house, so it smells good.

I was at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards one year – they called me up when somebody canceled two days before the thing, and asked me to present some awards.

You want my dark side? Have I ever stolen anything? Not so much intentionally. But I don’t think it’s so much stealing as… being a part of the flow of the universe.

Be available for life to happen.

Well, the past is gone, I know that. The future isn’t here yet, whatever it’s going to be. So, all there is, is this. The present. That’s it.

The money thing is, the sort of Elvis Presley thing of buying you mother car is great, that’s very good. My mother has learned how to spend money.