"I struggled for a while, but when I was cast in an Off Broadway show called 'Once Upon a Mattress,' that kind of put me on the map."

"I can't tell a joke to save my soul. It's just not my thing, though I love to listen to jokes."

"I was once asked to do my Tarzan yell at Bergdorf Goodman, and a guard burst in with a gun! Now I only do it under controlled circumstances."

"I don't eat much meat, fish, or poultry."

"My interesting diet tips are eat early and don't nosh between meals. I mean, I can pack it away."

"You know, one wonderful thing that came out of my Enquirer experience is that, in my case, it was ruled tabloids are magazines. Which means they didn't have the protection that a newspaper has."

"My grandmother and I saw an average of eight movies a week, double features, second run."

"Originally, I came from Texas, and we lived on - I guess you'd call it welfare, what we called relief."

"I'm not a person who likes to confront."

"It all happened the way it was supposed to. I wouldn't change anything. I had such a great run."

"Just scream! You vent, and the body just feels good after a good old yell."

"My childhood was rough, we were poor and my parents were alcoholics, but nobody was mean. I knew I was loved. We were on welfare, but I never felt abandoned or unloved."

"I do the 'New York Times' crossword puzzle every morning to keep the old grey matter ticking."

"In '57, I got a job at the Blue Angel nightclub, and a gentleman named Ken Welch wrote all my material for me. I lived at a place called the Rehearsal Club that was actually the basis for a play called Stage Door."

"Celebrity was a long time in coming; it will go away. Everything goes away."

"I really enjoy connecting with the audience."

"I have a great memory."

"I had a good loud voice and I wasn't afraid to be goofy or zany."

"But I don't begrudge anybody, because I know how hard it is to have that dream and to make it happen, whether or not it's just to put a roof over your head and food on the table."

"As far as sitcoms go, I thought Jenna Elfman in 'Dharma and Greg' was a wonderful physical comedienne who had great timing."

"On the good days, my mother would haul out the ukulele and we'd sit around the kitchen table - it was a cardboard table with a linoleum top - and sing."

"Well, I don't know how astute I am, but I did want to be a journalist when I was growing up."

"Funny is funny. I dare anyone to look at Tim Conway and Harvey Korman doing the dentist sketch, which is more than 40 years old, and not scream with laughter."

"I think the hardest thing to do in the world, show-business-wise, is write comedy."

"Ask anyone who's successful how they got there, you're going to hear a different story."

"My favorite is doing the television show, as a variety show, every week. If the show wasn't that great one week, we could always come back and apologize, you know?"

"I very much enjoyed doing 'Law & Order,' playing a killer - that was fun, and they had a family feel around the set, so it was a happy show to do even though the subject matter was quite the opposite."

"I loved doing 'The Family' with Eunice and Mama. They were very interesting because there were no jokes written into those sketches. It was all character-driven. And sometimes it got a little heavy."

"My favourite comedian, of course, is Tim Conway. He has a way about him - being that belly-laugh kind of funny, and he has the improvisational skills, too. I've never seen anybody better."

"I've always been able to recount things, and I have a really good memory about dialog and what people have said before and this and that."

"It costs a lot to sue a magazine, and it's too bad that we don't have a system where the losing team has to pay the winning team's lawyers."

"I'm not always optimistic. You wouldn't have all cylinders cooking if you were always like Mary Poppins."

"Because of YouTube, I'm getting fan mail from 10-year-olds and teenagers and college kids."

"I wish my mother had left me something about how she felt growing up. I wish my grandmother had done the same. I wanted my girls to know me."

"I am not a person who yells at all, but I realized that I have always felt so good after doing the Tarzan yell, after doing Charo, or screaming as Eunice."

"I was kind of shy as a kid. I was a pretty good student. I was a wallflower, or nerd, if you will."

"What I like to write about is stuff I know. I don't think I could write a novel. I don't think I have it in me to come up with those kinds of characters."

"I'm really not that funny in real life! But I am the best audience one could find. I love to laugh."

"I'm glad I was born when I was. My time was the golden age of variety. If I were starting out again now, maybe things would happen for me, but it certainly would not be on a variety show with 28 musicians, 12 dancers, two major guest stars, 50 costumes a week by Bob Mackie. The networks just wouldn't spend the money today."

"I was in California, and I was going to UCLA, and I knew I certainly didn't have movie star looks. I remember seeing pictures and photos of Ethel Merman and Mary Martin, who were kind of average looking. I said, 'Well, that's for me, then, to go back to New York and try to be in musical comedy on Broadway.'"

"When I was in college at UCLA, I took a playwriting course. I was all set to be a writer. But I had to take this acting class as a theater arts major. I had to do this scene in a one-act comedy. I just said this line, and then... this laugh happened. I thought, 'Whoa. This is a really good feeling. What have I been missing?'"

"In the beginning, my mother humored me when I told her I wanted to be a reporter."

"It had not occurred to me that marriage requires the same effort as a career. And unlike a career, marriage requires a joint effort."

"It is my belief that one's salary is between an individual and the IRS."

"Many senators have developed a canny sense of what will play best for the audience."

"Men still control the news, both on and off camera."

"Mistakes are not always the result of someone's ineptitude."

"My current goal is to place a moratorium on goals."

"My goal was to be a network correspondent by the time I was 30."

"My most lucrative job in college was a stint as the regional Dodge Girl."