Dick Van Dyke Quotes

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I wanted to be Stan Laurel, then I wanted to be Fred Astaire and then Captain Kangaroo. I actually started out as a radio announcer when I was 17 and never left the business, so that's literally 70 years.

I was lucky to get the kinds of parts I wanted. I always said I didn't want to do anything my kids can't see.

I wrote a little autobiography about how luck has to do with everything. It's called 'My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business.' A publisher came to me and said, 'Write a book,' so I did. I wanted to call it 'Everybody Else Has Got a Book.'

I've won several Emmys, a Tony and a Grammy, so maybe somebody will let me have an Oscar, and then I'll have a full set.

My favorite unknown movie is 'The Comic.'

I went from my mother to my wife. And to this day, I can't bear to be alone.

'Mary Poppins' was one of the best experiences of my life.

They did ask me to do 'Dancing With The Stars;' I said I can do one show, but on that show you have to come up with a new number every week, and I told them that I think I'm a little past that stage.

I sing and dance. That's my job.

'The Dick Van Dyke Show' was the most fun I ever had and the most creative period of my life.

I was the worst game show host that ever lived, and I knew it.

When I auditioned for 'Bye Bye Birdie' on Broadway, Gower Champion said, 'You've got the job!' I said, 'Mr. Champion, I can't dance.' He said, 'We'll teach you what you need to know.'

The secret to keeping moving is keeping moving.

I've been talking about retiring for years. It's my standard answer to the question, 'What are your future plans?' The truth is, I'll always want to do things that are worthwhile or fun.

Put me on solid ground and I'll start tapping! At my age they say to keep moving.

I do miss the rhythms of comedy. And I've never been able to perform very well without an audience. The sitcoms I've done had them. It was like doing a little play.

Rob Petrie is who I really am - in personality and general ineffectiveness.

I never had a lot of drive, but because I had family responsibilities, I had a lot of tenacity - the tenacity of a drowning man.

When I was a kid, I loved all the silent comedians - Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, Chaplin. And I used to imitate them. I'd go to see a Buster Keaton movie and come home and try things out I'd seen. I learned to do pratfalls when I was very young.

I worked nightclubs all through my 20s, and I was a teetotaler.

I never wanted to be an actor, and to this day I don't. I can't get a handle on it. An actor wants to become someone else. I am a song-and-dance man, and I enjoy being myself, which is all I can do.

I'm really in retirement. My career is over. I'm just playing now and having a great time. I like to keep busy, and I'm doing what's fun for me.

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.

When I get some budding young comic who'll come up to me and say, 'What was it like to do it in those days?' I try to be as gracious to him as Stan Laurel was to me.

All of us involved say 'The Dick Van Dyke Show' was the best five years of our lives. We were like otters at play.

Do you know that I was the anchor on the 'CBS Morning Show?' And my newsman was Walter Cronkite.

I watch 'Al Jazeera.' They have news that you can't find anywhere else. They do great documentaries, too.

I get little kids who recognize me from 'Mary Poppins,' and it just delights me because it's our third generation.

I'm not a loner. I have to have a life partner.

I don't play golf. I have more fun singing and dancing.

I'm always announcing my retirement. I'm still not retired.

My wife, as proud as she was of me, hated show business for good reasons. There was something about the spouse always being pushed out of the way, shoved aside. She wanted to get away from it.

I got into a Broadway show before I ever sang and danced. I learned how after I got in the show.

I found out retirement means playing golf, or I don't know what the hell it means. But to me, retirement means doing what you have fun doing.

There's a lot of very funny people I'd love to work with that I've never met, of course. I love Steve Martin and Jim Carrey.

Jon Stewart kills me. I love him. And Bill Maher. He does an hour on HBO. But entirely political. It is awfully rough, but he does make me laugh.

I married somebody half my age, and everybody thought I was crazy, but she is just an absolute angel.

Emotionally, I'm about 13.

I've always been a bit of an orphan, because actors say, 'Well, he's more of a dancer.' And dancers say, 'No. He's really a singer.' And singers say, 'No. He's an actor.'

My career is over. I'm just playing now and having a great time. I like to keep busy, and I'm doing what's fun for me.

In the best of all worlds, the producers would take some responsibility for the kinds of things they're putting out. Unfortunately, they don't.

I've made peace with insecurity... because there is no security of any kind.

I didn't even start dancing until I was in my thirties, and it was like flying.

In Bernie Sanders, I see a man saying that the emperor has no clothes while everyone around him insists they see clothes. Whether or not he makes it to the White House, I hope and pray that everyone hears the alarm he is sounding now; it may be the last voice we ever hear.

Somebody sent me a British magazine listing the 20 worst dialects ever done in movies. I was No. 2, with the worst Cockney accent ever done. No. 1 was Sean Connery, because he uses his Scottish brogue no matter what he's playing.

It's more in my nature to be optimistic, I think. I'm one of those people who gets up on the right side of the bed in the morning.

Everyone should dance. And everyone should sing. People say, 'Well, I can't sing.' Everybody can sing. That you do it badly is no reason not to sing.

The American people hit the streets and did something that the government wouldn't do: the Civil Rights Act. It didn't go down well with the corporate world.

Women will never be as successful as men because they have no wives to advise them.

Today, if you're not an alcoholic, you're nobody.

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

A lot of violence, a lot of gore in it, and I just didn't want to do that kind of thing.

Bob Hope, like Mark Twain, had a sense of humor that was uniquely American, and like Twain, we'll likely not see another like him.

But I wish they would make a musical of some kind. I miss musicals so much. You don't see them anymore.

But once we got on the air, everybody except Morey Amsterdam pretty much stuck to the script.

I cannot tell you what it means when children recognize. This is about the third generation for me. And when kids that small recognize me, it really pleases me, very gratifying.

I don't have any children; I have four middle-aged people.

I don't think we've got much of a chance to tell you the truth. But our main problem is our audience skews a little older than most shows, and I don't think our people can stay up that late. I certainly can't.

I grew up in Danville, Illinois, right in the middle of the state.

I have four children and I have seven grandkids.

I loved to fall down.

I never made a good movie.

I think it's being thrown at the wolves, we call it in our business.

I think most people will tell you that. They can go along and, while they're denying that they are addicted, say it's stress this, it's this, it's that. But I - it's - I think - I really believe there is a gene. Some people become addicted and others don't.

I think the saddest moment in my life just happened two months ago. My old nightclub partner passed away, Phil Erickson down in Atlanta. He - I owe him everything. He put me in the business and taught me about everything I know.

I turned down some movies that were quite good. mainly on the basis of taste.

I wanted to be a radio announcer.

I was always in show business but in many ways was not really of show business. I didn't move in show business circles, particularly, still don't do it.

I've retired so many times now it's getting to be a habit.

My kids are so much better parent than I was.

My son Barry, of course, has been on from the beginning. And his son Shane is playing now a med student regularly on the show. And at one point or another, I've had all four of his kids on the show.

No, I did night clubs right here in Los Angeles. My partner, Phil Erickson, put me in the business, a guy from my home town, a dear friend who we just lost a couple of months ago.

No, no, it was the relationships. That was that group. People believed that Rob and Laura were really married in real life. You know, a lot of people believed that.

Oh, I had an idea for a pilot of my own at the time, and then Carl sent me about eight scripts and simply I threw my idea out the window because the writing was just so good.

Oh, well, my first love is comedy or singing and dancing.

Probably one of the happiest moments, outside the birth of all of my kids, was the first time we won an Emmy, that the show won an Emmy. That was a big night.

So as my kids will tell you, they had a pretty normal life.

So at 16 I got a job at the local radio station. And I was working after school and weekends. I did the news; I did everything. I did - played records.

So I think we're kind of an alternate choice for people who have had it with sex and violence.

Stan said he used to keep Hardy late, make him miss his golf game, and really get him mad.

We had all week to rehearse. An audience would come in at the end of the week and we'd our little show. Most of the ad- libbing happened during the week on the show.

You know, I'm almost out of the habit of watching episodic television now.

When I was a kid, I had ambitions for being a television announcer, which was before television took off, you know, in the late '40s. And just through necessity, going out looking for work, I was starting to sing, and dance, and act, and I never expected to do that, nor to have any success at it at least.

I can't work with my brother without laughing.

I like 'The Office.' I particularly like the British version with Ricky Gervais. Of course, I liked the 'Seinfeld' show a lot. I thought that was an awfully good show.

I did a 'Golden Girls' once, which shot in front of an audience, and that went well. I had a good time. But I need an audience, for comedy at least.

I have four kids, seven grandkids, and four great-grandkids. Maybe I can become a great-great-grandfather if I hang on!

My brother and I laughed a lot as kids. We came up in the middle of the Depression, and neither one of us knew we were poor. We had nothing, but we didn't know it.

As wonderful as they were, my parents didn't teach me anything about self-discipline, concentration, patience, or focus. If I hadn't had a family myself, I probably never would've done anything. Marriage taught me responsibility.

When I started having kids, I thought, 'I don't want to do anything they can't watch.'

In my seventies, I exercised to stay ambulatory. In my eighties, I exercise to avoid assisted living.

I was a 'Laurel and Hardy' nut. I got to know Laurel at the end of his life, and it was a great thrill for me. He left me his bow tie and derby and told me that if they ever made a movie about him, he'd want me to play him.

I asked Fred Astaire once when he was about my age if he still danced, and he said 'Yes, but it hurts now.' That's exactly it. I can still dance, too, but it hurts now!

Once you get the kids raised and the mortgage paid off and accomplish what you wanted to do in life, there's a great feeling of: 'Hey, I'm free as a bird.'

I've had a lot of writers, in particular, who said they got into writing because of the 'Van Dyke Show.' They said it looked like fun.

Somebody asked what I wanted on my gravestone. I'm just going to put: 'Glad I Could Help.'

I played a killer twice. Once on 'Matlock,' on Andy Griffith's show, I got to play the killer.

I was the class clown, you know, that kind of thing, and I gathered around me a group of guys who also were silly. I was in all the plays and everything. But I don't know, at that time show businesses looked like the moon, you know, it was so far away. I wanted to be a radio announcer.

I think, the 'Van Dyke Show' and 'Mary Poppins' are two of the best periods of my life. I had so much fun, I didn't want it to end.

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