Dick Van Dyke Quotes

When I first started out, 'Time' magazine did an article on what it called 'the sick comics,' and they were myself, Shelley Berman, Nichols & May, Jonathan Winters, Lenny Bruce, and Mort Sahl. We were considered 'sick.'

I don't mind personal insults, but when you insult the jokes that I tell you're insulting Fred Allen, Bob Hope, Burns and Allen, Trevor McGee and Molly Picon.

I believe it is important for comedians to know who came before them.

I learned everything that I know about comedy and about show business and a lot about life from Carl.

It's still amazing to me to walk down the halls of 'SNL.' You see pictures of the greatest comedians we grew up worshiping, basically. It's crazy to be able to still work there.

I was 18 when I started. I was hanging out with some friends and they asked if I had tried stand-up before. I hadn't, but I thought: 'What the hell?' So I went to an open mic night, and I liked it.

The reason I do what I do is because I was influenced by Steve Martin, by Woody Allen, by Bob Newhart, by Carol Burnett, by Lucille Ball.

One day in '61, I was looking in the Santa Monica phone book for a number, and there it was: Stan Laurel, Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. I went over there and spent the afternoon with them. And pumped him with questions. I must have driven him crazy. I spent a lot of happy hours at Stan's house on Sundays just talking about comedy.

I always was trying to make people laugh as a kid. I was a big fan of Carol Burnett and Gilda Radner. I watched them and I remember feeling as a child, when I heard the laughter they got, a little jealous that they made someone laugh like that.

When someone can, on a worldwide level, make someone laugh, that's power. A lot my heroes - Eddie Murphy, Will Ferrell, the Wayans, Adam Sandler - they get it. And I've always felt that Andy Samberg is the future of comedy.

My body has been making women laugh for the last 20 years and I'm happy to continue to oblige.

I really understood a lot more about comedy after listening to Bill Hicks, who died at 32 years old. He's probably the best comedian who ever lived. Although you can't say that because of Carlin, Cosby and Pryor.

It went from Bob Newhart to Flip Wilson to Bill Cosby to Richard Pryor to George Carlin to Cheech and Chong. I had all these records.

When I was in high school, I was doing all the plays. My drama teacher, Melody Duggan, was the one one who first made me do stand-up. She's the origin of the whole thing; it's all her. In high school in Denver, that was kind of the beginning of it all.

I've met so many remarkable people so far, coming up through stand-up all these years, who just aren't alive anymore. Because they are dead. Some really great people who helped change my life and career, people like Richard Pryor, Sam Kinison, Rodney Dangerfield, Johnny Carson.

I've always loved the Marx brothers and Charlie Chaplin.

Guys like myself and Arn Anderson, we're always trying to pass knowledge along.

My brother nurtured the love of stand-up comedy in a skinny little black kid named Tony.

Young stand-ups, we ought to do comedy in George Carlin's spirit, in Richard Pryor's spirit, in Jackie Gleason's spirit, in Lucille Ball's spirit, because they did it with the spirit.

Everybody grows up with comedy. I mean, Egyptian comedy has a very, very old tradition. Our theater and our movies are just, like, amazing.

I'm a comic; we get hecklers every night! It's really just part of the job.

I would love to mentor youngsters.

It is one thing that I get a lot of joy out of, and that is passing the torch. Some stuff I show young wrestlers, people haven't seen in 15 years. I show it to them and the gratification I get is when I see them do it out there in a match.

To be honest, I wasn't the best stand-up comic.

Stand-up for me is usually a weekend thing. I go out of town and just do it.