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A biggest mistake I made when I started doing a talk show was I thought you had to read the books.

Dick Cavett

Greatly talented performers don’t know – often spectacularly – what’s best for them, don’t know what their talents really are, and don’t know what’s just plain wrong for them.
DICK CAVETT

Best Dumb Great Talent Unknown Wrong
I did standup while still working for Johnny Carson in the mid-’60s, thus gaining the advantage of at least getting laughs from him about how I hadn’t the night before.
DICK CAVETT

Advantage Laughter Myself Night Stand Work
Sloppy language leads to sloppy thought, and sloppy thought to sloppy legislation.
DICK CAVETT

Language Leadership Thinking
Every time I nostalgically try to regain my liking of John McCain, he reaches into his sleaze bag and pulls out something malodorous.
DICK CAVETT

Food Myself Reach Time
Anything seen on TV is, in a subtle and sinister sense, thereby endorsed.
DICK CAVETT

Promotion See Subtle
Every comic can report a few ‘gift from the gods’ moments.
DICK CAVETT

Comic Gift God Moments Report
Why are sex and violence always linked? I’m afraid they’ll blur together in people’s minds – sexandviolence – until we can’t tell them apart. I expect to hear a newscaster say, “The mob became unruly and the police were forced to resort to sex.”
DICK CAVETT

Afraid Mindset Myself People Police Sex Violence
Chris Matthews can’t start any sentence without ‘Let me ask you this… ‘ And I love Chris Matthews! But almost everybody in journalism does it. Who’s stopping you? Just say it!
DICK CAVETT

Journalism Myself Sentence Start
I think we live in an age of increasing mediocrity.
DICK CAVETT

Age Average Live Thinking
I like when the ice gets thin, the going gets rough, the guests get edgy.
DICK CAVETT

Edge Guest Ice Myself
I feel sorry for the poor kids whose parents feel they’re qualified to teach them at home. Of course, some parents are smarter than some teachers, but in the main I see home-schooling as misguided foolishness.
DICK CAVETT

Children Feeling Fools Guide Home Parents Poor Smart
Can you picture yourself at the age 60 doing what you do now?
DICK CAVETT

Age Photograph Yourself
I confess, I do have to remind myself almost daily that there are people on this earth capable of reading, writing, eating and dressing themselves who believe their lives are ruled from billions of miles away, by the stars – and, of course, the planets.
DICK CAVETT

Believe Confession Live Planet Reading Reminder Space
A conversation does not have to be scintillating in order to be memorable. I once met a president of the United States, and his second sentence to me was about knees.
DICK CAVETT

Conversation Memorable Myself Order Sentence
To label me an intellectual is a misunderstanding of what that is.
DICK CAVETT

Intellectual Label Myself Understand
The emotions in all true anxiety dreams are next to unbearable.
DICK CAVETT

Anxiety Bear Dreams Emotion True
I haven’t ever found any great writing on that wonderful and often unappreciated art form, the insult.
DICK CAVETT

Appreciation Art Form Greatness Wonderful Writing
You have to be on TV a surprisingly long time before you’re stopped on the street. Then, when you are, you get a lot of, ‘Hey, you’re great! What’s your name again?’
DICK CAVETT

Name Street Surprise Time Yourself
Therapists need to give a depressed patient support and direction.
DICK CAVETT

Depression Direction Patience Therapy
Every writer knows that unless you were born gifted with either supreme confidence or outsize ego, handing in your work holds, in some cases, admitted terror. If that’s too strong, at least fairly high anxiety.
DICK CAVETT

Anxiety Born Ego Gift Strong Writing
I’m not sure why writing for others became harder. Probably a reluctance to give away anything you might conceivably use yourself caused a block. I did it, but it remained hard when it had once been easy.
DICK CAVETT

Block Easy Hard Myself Reason Writing
I don’t think anyone ever gets over the surprise of how differently one audience’s reaction is from another.
DICK CAVETT

Audience Different Myself Reaction Surprise Thinking
There should be three days a week when no one is allowed to say: ‘What’s your sign?’ Violators would have their copies of Kahlil Gibran confiscated.
DICK CAVETT

Allow Day Violate
I’ll be happy if I can just stay out of Nebraska.
DICK CAVETT

Away Happiness Myself Stay
There is something about a Luger that separates it from all other handguns, and Luger devotees and Luger society members speak of it in romantic terms that must sound plain nuts to those who consider themselves level-headed.
DICK CAVETT

Devotee Head Level Romance Society Weapon
You can, after all, reduce the reasons for watching TV to but two: to be lulled, and to be stimulated. Some people do one sometimes, the other sometimes. Some people do all of one or all of the other.
DICK CAVETT

People Reason Television Watch
It’s no fun being a specimen.
DICK CAVETT

Fun One Liner Specimen

A biggest mistake I made when I started doing a talk show was I thought you had to read the books.

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A biggest mistake I made when I started doing a talk show was I thought you had to read the books.

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Popular Authors

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