I have a loyalty that runs in my bloodstream, when I lock into someone or something, you can't get me away from it because I commit that thoroughly. That's in friendship, that's a deal, that's a commitment. Don't give me paper - I can get the same lawyer who drew it up to break it. But if you shake my hand, that's for life.
Jerry Lewis
You can ask me anything you want. That doesn't mean I'm going to answer you.
Every man's dream is to be able to sink into the arms of a woman without also falling into her hands.
I don't want to be remembered. I want the nice words when I can hear them.
I've had great success being a total idiot.
You want to know why Barbra Streisand is so difficult? Because she's brilliant. She's a brilliant entertainer, she's a brilliant lady, and she's a wonderful human being, and the community doesn't like it.
I have always said that I cannot allow the child within me to die. It's kept me alive.
I never got a formal education. So my intellect is my common sense. I don't have anything else going for me. And my common sense opens the door to instinct.
Nothing can stop anyone who has a love and passion about their work.
You can't be faulted for being selfish if you're going to get better because of it.
The film I did with Bobby De Niro, 'The King of Comedy' - an awful lot came to me out of that movie because De Niro never allowed me any room to be crazy. If I had tried to play it the way I would normally play it and get hysterical, Bobby would punch me.
God hadn't made me handsome, but he'd given me something, I always felt: funny bones.
Most performers are used to the highs and the lows. If you can let a low stop you, that would be a sad commentary.
I happen to believe in the human condition so strongly that I don't have to make up games to play with people. Here's what I think: If it's good, let's go for it. If it needs work to be better, let's work on it.
Going unnoticed has never been my strong suit.
I like to watch all those shows that shouldn't be on the air - reality shows.
I started as a writer. I had the dumb act, but I made my living from writing.
I never tell an audience what they can expect. I never have, and I never will.
Love is what makes you dream, and love is what makes you want to get up in the morning. Love is something that you want to be a part of because it makes you better.
The greatest thing I can remember in my whole career was the Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey clowns asking me to appear with them at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles in 1965.
If I was performing, I had no pain. But you can't stay on stage 24 hours a day.
Most people are embarrassed to admit there's another human being that's in control of them, that your heart beats three times as fast because you've given yourself to someone else.
I'm sour at times.
I dream in color.
I am probably the most selfish man you will ever meet in your life. No one gets the satisfaction or the joy that I get out of seeing kids realize there is hope.
I will do whatever is necessary to make better the stupidity on my part - and therefore go after those who are acting stupid themselves. It's not popular. You don't make friends when you do that. And I couldn't care less.
I was once six feet tall, but at 85, I'm now five feet four.
Postwar America was a very buttoned-up nation. Radio shows were run by censors, Presidents wore hats, ladies wore girdles. We came straight out of the blue - nobody was expecting anything like Martin and Lewis. A sexy guy and a monkey is how some people saw us.
To ask a pratfall comedian, a dishes-in-the-face comic like me, to lay back and bring none of that stuff to the script because it doesn't call for it? That's tough.
When you get a question like, 'Did you like meeting Her Majesty?' 'No, I thought she was a slob.' I mean, what are you going to say... The mischief comes into me when I'm doing a Q&A, I'm 9 years old again. I don't get mad. I do get offended.
I think it has helped that I am so curious about what has been happening to me and that I have enjoyed watching the changes through my life, you know? I didn't know what was going to happen to me next.
You see, the people that have a point of view and have an opinion and have some intellect are dangerous in the film community - they're dangerous.
What's happened at 85 is I've lost my appetite. I used to be a little hog when I was young. But now I really don't seem to need it.
Being 90 is not simple, but it's interesting, very interesting. Before I was 90, I could walk, I could see well, I could hear terrific, and now, I can't hear or see or walk.
I can't stand to ask anyone, 'How was that?'
I've never been more than 9 years old.
There's nothing more dramatic than the comedy I've done. Because the comedy I've done is to get to the audience, get them to feel it, or they won't laugh.
When I hit around 65, 66, I started to feel tremendous worth and incredible personal esteem. I was becoming very cognisant of my contribution to the American spirit of helping your fellow man and all of the good stuff.
I expect people that come to the studio to work to come with the same energy I come with. If I see less than that, I get very strong about, if you want to do this, come with a sense of pride, come with eagerness and anxiety.
From 1936 on, I have taken more falls than any other 20 comedians put together. From the time I was 21, I've taken them on everything from clay courts to cement to wood floors, coming off pianos, going out a two-story window, landing on Dean, falling into the rough. You do that and you're gonna have problems.
A lot of people resent that I've been in someone's life for 50 years. Why shouldn't people have an affection for me and what I've done? Didn't I have to be genuine for them to buy into what I did? There are children who grow up today who will not have that when they're 55 years old. With whom will they have it? Name an example for me.
That never stops. That's what drives you: the joy and excitement of doing what you love.
I'm always thinking about future projects and at the same time trying to finish the project you're in the middle off.
The young man who's had the Guggenheim fortune behind him all his life - he can hire all the authorities on the subject to teach him how to do a monologue, but he's never going to have the right stuff to pull it off. If he doesn't walk out onstage needing to walk out there, he doesn't have a dream of doing well.
People hate me because I am a multifaceted, talented, wealthy, internationally famous genius.
Adrenaline is so strong that none of us understand it.
What happens at 90 is that I don't walk so good, my eyes are going, I can't hear well, and I'm getting all of the 90s residuals.
I almost resent being Charley Moviestar. Yeah, I'm grateful. But it takes me away from my kids.
A woman doing comedy doesn't offend me, but sets me back a bit. I, as a viewer, have trouble with it. I think of her as a producing machine that brings babies in the world.
I tell young comics, 'Do you want this badly enough? It's there. But you have to go get it. And if you think I'm going to give you the key to the lock of that door, there is no key, there is no lock, and there is no door.'
