Jeff Dunham Quotes

Just like every kid who comes into show business on some level, I used to put shows on in my basement. I even started with doing tricks and having a ventriloquist dummy.

When I was a kid, I lived in this small town way out in the country. We had three TV channels and one radio station. I couldn't even get my hands on good comic books. My aunt, who is a librarian, gave me Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House on the Prairie," and Lewis's "The Chronicles of Narnia." They were such incredible treasures to have in my somewhat mundane country life.

I've worked ever since I was a kid with a two-bit kit of magic tricks trying to improve my skills at entertaining whatever public I had - and to make myself ready, whenever the breaks came, to entertain a wider and more demanding public.

The game was easy for me as a kid. I had to play a while to find out how hard it is.

I had an idyllic childhood and when my parents bought me a Punch and Judy Show and a ventriloquist's dummy, I'd perform anywhere, anytime. My parents were wonderful when I told them I wanted to be an entertainer.

I was also an Action Comic fan when I was a young kid and those comic books affected me and Superman is - he's the one. He's the first one. He's the one. He's the one everybody is always compared to.

Christmas was really where I started coming into my own as a performer because I did all this stuff on my own, all this performing on my own. When other kids were outside playing, I was in my room conjuring characters and impressions and things like that.

As a kid, before I got into music, I did all the drama classes, went to theater camp in the summers, so it wasn't totally a foreign world.

This sounds corny, but I once told a kid when I was in a the library conference, the best - not the best, what I really hope for is that someday 20, 30 years from now, some kid, 12-year-old, 15-year-old, in Des Moines will be going through the stacks, if they have stacks anymore - they probably won't - and find a book of mine and get something from it.

I do like comic book movies, but only the ones that I read as a kid.

We've lost our competitive spirit. We've become so obsessed with making kids feel good about themselves that we've lost sight of building the skills they need to actually be good at things.

As a kid growing up in the 1950s I became acutely aware of the changes taking place in American culture and I must say I didn't much like it. I witnessed the debasement of architecture, and I could see a decline in the quality of things like comic books and toys, things made for kids. Old things seemed to have more life, more substance, more humanity in them.

I wanted to write honest books for kids because I didn't have those when I was a kid.

No matter what does, or doesn't, happen for me in the music industry, getting to play the Opry as a kid was always be a highlight of mine.

The '80s were a really different time for kids.Technology has changed so much of how we stay in touch and keep tabs on people.

One of my favorite stories growing up was A Wrinkle in Time. I loved that book. I still remember the image, so strongly, of all the kids coming out of their house at the same time, they're all bouncing a ball at the same time, and they all go back in at the same time. A Wrinkle in Time moved me deeply.

I've carried on, in that same tradition, with my kids. Aside from just his brilliance, in my estimation, I think he had one of the great imaginations of the 20th century. One of the reasons why the tradition carries on, all these years later, is because, as a parent, those are the books that you go to and pull off the shelf because they never stop delighting you.

Being with a kid always takes you to being a kid somehow, and they really are showing me a childhood I might not have had in some way.

All the craft skills that I have, I feel like I developed and honed in drama school. It's the most important thing for me.

Cultivate a love of skill. Learn theatrical skills. They will give you continual pleasure, self-confidence, and link you to fifty thousand years of the history of our profession.

When I was a kid, I used to be way more nerdy about comic books and comic book characters. I still love them, but I don't collect anymore.

Every kid I knew had a father with a little stash of men's magazines which the father thought was secret and which the kid knew all about.

I remember seeing Stand by Me, when I was around 12, and just feeling like, "This is so refreshing to see kids swear and smoke cigarettes like my friends." It just felt much more real than the Sesame Street version of childhood that I'd been spoon-fed.

I think Broadway is good for sharpening your skills. It's the best for really reaching the zenith of your talent. You go so far and reach the peak of it and you say, "Maybe this is the best performance I can do."

I was always into performing and dancing as a kid and acting was a safe place to have all my feelings, which is good as a child.