Top 135 Quotes & Sayings by Dick Cavett - Page 2

Electronic devices dislike me. There is never a day when something isn't ailing.

Meryl Streep belongs on anybody's list of greats.

Show people tend to treat their finances like their dentistry. They assume the people who handle it know what they are doing.

It's lamented that the youth get their news from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. It's lamentable that they get more from them than from the news.

I have a feeling that about 90% of my life has been shaped by my voice, both as an embarrassment and as an advantage. There was always the terrible incongruity of this deep voice barreling out of this little body. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was aware that it was ludicrous, that it took on an importance that wasn't really there.

Show people tend to treat their finances like their dentistry. They assume the man handling it knows what he is doing.

I find most 'sacred music' pretty dismal.

I always wanted to live in a haunted house.

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.

When I'm doing an appearance somewhere and taking questions from the audience, I can always count on: 'Tell about the guy who died on your show!'

Coming up through the ranks of any calling can be rough, but that battered soul who survives the early years of courting the comic muse comes close to knowing what only the soldier knows: What combat is like.

I like when the ice gets thin, the going gets rough, the guests get edgy.

It was at a vividly bad time in Norman Mailer's life that I met him, and a sort of water-treading time in mine. He had stabbed his wife, and I was a copy boy at Time magazine.

There are online forms you can fill out to send to your lawmakers, demanding that nothing - nothing at all or in any way - be done about any guns whatever, anywhere.

The sudden death at 51 of James Gandolfini is intolerable.

By the time I was in the fourth grade, I sounded exactly like my father on the phone.

I have a disturbing problem with losing things. My vulnerability to loss-distress could properly be labeled not only inordinate, but neurotic.

I have yet to see one of those Comedy Central shows with multiple standup comics that doesn't include someone the size of the Hindenburg.

Teaching is an art and a profession requiring years of training.

I feel like I've been watching Irwin Corey forever. I saw him in the 1950s, and I thought he was old then.

I haven't ever found any great writing on that wonderful and often unappreciated art form, the insult.

Anyone working in the media can tell you that there seems to be an always-ready-to-explode segment of the populace for whom offense is a fate worse than anything imaginable. You'd think offense is one of the most calamitous things that could happen to a human being; right up there with the loss of a limb, or just missing a parking space.

I would not ever try to be a show intellectual, which I was accused of doing a while on ABC. I thought you were supposed to read the guests' books.

The Nixon administration kept a nasty eye on our show... Cops would come by - often just in time to see the act they wanted to see.

Years have passed since I have set foot in a comedy club. If the comic is doing badly it's painful, and if the comic is doing brilliantly, it's extremely painful.

There were several things a Yale freshman was supposed to be able to do. You had to demonstrate in the Olympic-size Yale pool that you could swim 50 yards or be inducted into swimming class.

Comedians are sometimes resentful of their writers. Probably because it's hard for giant egos to admit you need anyone but yourself to be what you are.

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.

The greatest benefit of depression is the fact that when I have talked about it, every so often someone comes up and says, 'You saved my dad's life.'

Home schooling as an idea is on a par with home dentistry.

Every time someone says, 'You know, we really ought to get together,' if I were really honest, I would ask 'Why?'

I've actually gotten so I don't associate television with entertainment very much.

Anything seen on TV is, in a subtle and sinister sense, thereby endorsed.

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

I live a sensible life. You know, I don't take on too much.

Statistically, I'd say comedy writers are perhaps the sanest category of show people. And why not? They make big money, and although it's not an easy trade - particularly when you're at your galley oar five days a week - it's easier on the nerves and the psyche than living with the brain-squeezing pressure and cares of being the Star.

Obviously those who burn to be professional jesters mean that they want to be successful comedians. And those are always an elite, microscopic portion of the population. But oh, how they try.

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.

It takes a certain amount of guts to go to your class reunions.

Every comic can report a few 'gift from the gods' moments.

Nobody is going to try to confiscate guns, although some Web sites know better: President Obama, they are certain, wants to.

In relative youth, we assume we'll remember everything. Someone should urge the young to think otherwise.

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?'

I think I'd be pretty easy to write for.

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.

There's so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?

I don't see the future as bright, language-wise. I see it as a glass half empty - and evaporating quickly.

Commercials are not the only exposure that obesity gets on TV. It is by no means a rarity on the wonderful Judge Judy's show when both plaintiff and accused all but literally fill the screen.

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.

I get a kick out of people saying I was funny.

I'm sure I've all but lost friends by maintaining that, despite their love for it, I always saw Stanley Kramer's 'It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World' as more of an exercise in anti-comedy than humor.

If I were running a campaign, I'd urge taking the mountain of money reportedly squandered on pizza, coffee and bagels and spending it more wisely - on a talented young comedy writer.

I'm not freakishly short. I had, on my show, used shortness as a joke subject; it didn't really bother me.

I'm not the guy with the enormous comedy nose or the big feet or the bad posture or the whatever; a physical comic has certain things.

When I was a kid in Nebraska, a cantankerous farmer, known for plinking with his '22 at passing cars in which he perceived enemies, ingeniously rigged up a shotgun in his house, trained on the inside of his front door so as to widely distribute any intruder.

While other kids were out playing and doing healthy things, I read an ancient judo book with a neck hold that was fatal to so many people, they finally dropped it from judo.

Running my show is really like an actor being in repertory but where, in one day in one performance, you do scenes from a drama, a farce, a low comedy and a tragedy.

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.

I'm not all that enthralled by show business, and I'm not that much of a highbrow.

A grown man, weeping, is a tough thing to see.