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.

I would not want to do one-episode television - that's just a brief encounter with your audience. The arc takes the actor into an arena where he can really stretch.

My ego and my vanities have nothing to do with comedy.

We're leaving the House to people who either were born with a silver spoon in their mouth... or couldn't get better jobs in the first place.

There's something wonderful about taking a tag off a pair of socks, off a shirt, off a jacket. I really think that it has to do with my wanting to give myself all the perks that there are. It's part of my psychosis.

Interviews are vital, but you cannot allow an interviewer to take your life and disturb it.

I get paid for what most kids get punished for.

I need the applause.

A lot of people resent that I've been in someone's life for 50 years. Why shouldn't people have an affection for me and what I've done? Didn't I have to be genuine for them to buy into what I did? There are children who grow up today who will not have that when they're 55 years old. With whom will they have it? Name an example for me.

When I would be myself, I was being big-headed. I was being egotistical. I was a megalomaniac, when it really was just having not to be a monkey for a few hours a day. And fulfilling the need to be a man.

I really am opinionated, but not for long. I have found myself coming off of what I think of something because the guy I'm talking to makes better sense than I am. I have so many points of view, I can't keep track of 'em, because I talk to too many people... I'm not so opinionated that I won't budge.

It'll keep you alive for another 10 years if you get yourself a laugh once a day: either provoke it, or look around in the wildest laboratory in the world, the public.

I've had the greatest respect for my work in this country by Americans. Critics have no brains.

I have some very personal feelings about politics, but I don't get into it because I do comedy already.

I turned down 'Some Like It Hot.' See how smart I am? I felt I couldn't bring anything funny to it. The outfit was funny. I don't need to compete with the wardrobe.

My family was as absolute as the work.Family was first always.

When I'm working, I stay in ICU in any hospital that will get me a bed.

You would not believe some of the scripts I have seen. I have read something like 160 that I've rejected, and I keep them all, for posterity.

I'm an unusual man. I know that.

I don't talk about anything negative.

Marilyn Monroe was a fabulous dame - fabulous.

When I arrived in Las Vegas, I felt I was embraced by it.

Billy Crystal, Steve Martin do wonderful things.

An only child, I always wanted a large hug-house.

Every day is another something that comes along.

I think it has helped that I am so curious about what has been happening to me and that I have enjoyed watching the changes through my life, you know? I didn't know what was going to happen to me next.

My dad was a stickler for teaching me the pratfall. There is something magical about taking a good fall, and when it works, when you get that laugh, there's no better feeling in the world.

When I get an idea, I start to write like I was electrically motivated.