When the public starts classifying you as thoughtful, someone given to serious issues, you find yourself declassified as a humorist.
Everybody I meet in public seems to want to audition for me. If I ask a guy what time it is, he'll sing it to me.
I know a guy who gave up smoking cigarettes, consuming, sex, and wealthy meals.
Happiness is a tiger in your tank and a pussycat in your back seat.
Who cares what entertainers on the air think about international affairs? Who would want to hear me about Vietnam? They can hear all they want from people with reason to be respected as knowledgeable.
As for being sociable, I hate the phoniness in the showbiz world. I know this will be taken wrong, but I don't like clubs and organizations. I was never a joiner.
It's silly to have as one's sole object in life just making money, accumulating wealth. I work because I enjoy what I'm doing, and the fact that I make money at it - big money - is a fine-and-dandy side fact. Money gives me just one big thing that's really important, and that's the freedom of not having to worry about money. I'm concerned about values - moral, ethical, human values - my own, other people's, the country's, the world's values. Having money now gives me the freedom to worry about the things that really matter.
I don't think it's you that changes with success - it's the people around you who change. Because of your new status, they change in relation to you.
You become successful, the way I see it, only if you're good enough to deliver what the public enjoys. If you're not, you won't have any audience; so the performer really has more to do with his success than the public does.
There's a lot of hypocrisy in audiences. I'd never dream of telling even on a nightclub stage, let alone my show, some of the jokes that are told in a lot of the living rooms from which we get those letters!
Do you know my dream? I really want to become an aluminum-siding salesman.
Find me any performer anywhere who isn't egocentric. You'd better believe you're good, or you've got no business being out there.
Talking about sexual morality, I wouldn't agree that it's declining, but it's certainly changing. Young and old, we are very much in the process of taking a fresh look at the whole issue of morality. The only decline that's taking place - and it's about time - is in the old puritanical concept that sex is equated with sin.
Air Canada. That's a good name for a Canadian airline.
It was so hot today I saw a robin dipping his worm in Nestea.It was so hot today I saw a pigeon walking in the shadow of Orson Welles.It was so hot today that Burger King was singing, "if you want it your way, cook it yourself.
We're more effective than birth control pills.
People are brought up to think, "It's nice to be modest. It's nice to hide your light under a bushel." Well, bullshit! I've never bought that. In my business, the only thing you've really got is your talent; it's the only thing you have to sell.
I'm not one of those who spring up yelling, "Yippee! Another day!" I'll grumble and sulk around a couple of hours, reading newspapers and trying to pick out an idea I might do something with on the show. But I don't really start functioning until noon or later; then about two I go to the studio and the pace begins to quicken.
The Hollywood tradition I like best is called sucking up to the stars.
We have two kinds of air: regular and chunky style.
Your chances of getting hit by lighting go up if you stand under a tree, shake your fist at the sky, and say "Storms suck!!
There are very few Japanese Jews. As a result, there is no Japanese word for Alan King.
There's a big difference between being a loner and being lonely. I'm far from lonely. My day is full of things I enjoy, starting with my show. Any time my work is going well and I have a relationship with a woman that's pretty solid, that does it for me.
As long as I don't commit any crimes, you have no right to judge me except by my performance as a professional. On that level, you're welcome to think whatever you want about me.
From the time I was a little kid, I was always shy. Performing was when I was outgoing. So I guess I am a loner. I get claustrophobia if a lot of people are around.
