Dick Cavett Quotes - Page 3

I have never been converted to or even had much interest in spiritualism, occultism, Swedenborgianism or any particular religion. And I never, except occasionally for a laugh, visit the quacks who call themselves psychics.

Unpleasant reading on the subject of anger tells us that there's not really anything wrong with it. In limited amounts. It can even be a good thing. A pressure valve.

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

To call New York's traffic at holiday time a nightmare is to understate.

William F. Buckley was a man who had a great capacity for fun and for amusing himself by amazing others.

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.

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?'

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

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.

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.

Every writer knows that unless you were born gifted with either supreme confidence or outsize ego, handing in your work holds, in some cases, admitted terror. If that's too strong, at least fairly high anxiety.

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

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

I feel sorry for the poor kids whose parents feel they're qualified to teach them at home. Of course, some parents are smarter than some teachers, but in the main I see home-schooling as misguided foolishness.

Being the offspring of English teachers is a mixed blessing. When the film star says to you, on the air, 'It was a perfect script for she and I,' inside your head you hear, in the sarcastic voice of your late father, 'Perfect for she, eh? And perfect for I, also?'

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.

Once I left out what I then considered my best line because there was a suspected column rat in the house.

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

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

Every student of comedy should see Dame Edna at least twice.

The mob became unruly and the police were forced to resort to sex.

To label me an intellectual is a misunderstanding of what that is.

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.

I don't think anyone ever gets over the surprise of how differently one audience's reaction is from another.