You can't be faulted for being selfish if you're going to get better because of it.

If you're an old pro, you know how well you're doing when you're doing it, and your inner government spanks you if you're not doing well.

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.

I was once six feet tall, but at 85, I'm now five feet four.

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.

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 started as a writer. I had the dumb act, but I made my living from writing.

I've never been more than 9 years old.

Going unnoticed has never been my strong suit.

I almost resent being Charley Moviestar. Yeah, I'm grateful. But it takes me away from my kids.

You can't hold comedy back, because it needs to be exposed.

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.

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.

When I was onstage doing the work, adrenaline killed the pain because I never hurt in front of an audience.

When you are debilitated, and you're very depressed, and you believe there's no hope, you cannot get a better potpourri of down.

When I was young, I wasn't disciplined at all.

People hate me because I am a multifaceted, talented, wealthy, internationally famous genius.

I almost get annoyed at the fact that I'm not going to use all that I got.

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 think the cartoons that they're children are watching, particularly 'The Simpsons,' they're OK. I think that the adult audience is making much too much of the danger that they imply. That's not the case. The danger for children today, honey, is the news. Keep them away from news on television.

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.

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 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.

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.'

I feel I have been a part of some very wonderful films, and I have had it in mind when I was on the set, every day, that what I am doing has meaning.

When you're doing a different kind of film, you have to bring a different kind of attitude; you have to bring a different kind of concentration.

Adrenaline is wonderful. It covers pain. It covers dementia. It covers everything.

Getting attention is my business. My whole life's predicated on, 'Hey, look at me!'

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.

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.

I like to watch all those shows that shouldn't be on the air - reality shows.

I'm sour at times.

I never tell an audience what they can expect. I never have and I never will. I'm an entertainer for 75 years.

You think about getting old, but when you get there, it's not what you thought it would be.

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.

Commercial television has underestimated the intelligence of the public.

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.

If I was performing, I had no pain. But you can't stay on stage 24 hours a day.

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.

Pity? You don't want to be pitied because you're a cripple in a wheelchair? Stay in your house!

Red is uplifting.

This is the pain pacemaker. I've got a battery under my skin. From that battery are two electrodes that go into the spine where they cut bone away to accommodate it. Now I put on the power here. If I have the pain, the stimulator starts. It's tingling, like when your foot falls asleep, you know?

Turning 90 is not for sissies.

Seeing a woman project the kind of aggression that you have to project as a comic just rubs me wrong.

Don't you understand how dramatic it is to be a comic? To be a fool, to get people to laugh at this show-off? Milton Berle could take Laurence Olivier and stick him under the table if he wanted to. And so could I.

When you're 89, dementia develops. I mean, I've told a story onstage, and I'm telling it with a full heart, and I forgot the damn punch line.

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'm really not thick-skinned - my wife will tell you that I take sunsets personally - but I know that I've got the belly for whatever comes down the pike. I think it's tenacity. You've been there before, and you just have to recall, 'How did I handle that one?'

People think I'm against critics because they are negative to my work. That's not what bothers me. What bothers me is they didn't see the work. I have seen critics print stuff about stuff I cut out of the film before we ran it. So don't tell me about critics.

If I found the cure for dystrophy tomorrow, I would do a telethon in four weeks for acute pain that in this country is a bigger problem than cancer, heart, sickle cell, anemia, name it. It is - it's hitting 70 million Americans.