Bob newhart quotes

I feel more comfortable in comedy.

I really don't know what makes a comedian. I think it's a family background and environment. Yet if you put the same ingredients in another person, he may never utter a funny line.

You never know when you'll come upon something and it's going to be fodder for new material.

You do a clean show and it's over and the audience have enjoyed themselves and you've enjoyed yourself, and you haven't had to resort to shock.

I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down'.

The giant superstars are people whose talent is so enormous that their death wish can't destroy it.

I've been a very lucky actor.

Humor's a weapon if you want to make it one.

I think that what comes through in Chicago humor is the affection. Even though youre poking fun at someone or something, theres still an affection for it.

You may not think I'm a sex symbol, but I became a father at the age of 48. Now young people think of me as a mini-folk hero because it's difficult for them to believe a man of my age is sexually active.

When I started out in 1960, I thought it might possibly last a couple of years. I never expected it to last 42. I take great satisfaction in that longevity.

I don't have a show anymore. I don't have a check coming in every week. This is important to me, I got to score a million tonight or it could all be over.

I kind of do it in my head, then I'll try pieces of it on stage and if it looks promising, I'll put it together.

There's a lot of cynicism. Let's really enjoy Christmas, with all that's going on in the world.

I can't remember the last live-action, non-animated Christmas movie.

I was never a Certified Public Accountant. I just had a degree in accounting. It would require passing a test, which I would not have been able to do.

The problem is that we live in an uptight country. Why don't we just laugh at ourselves? We are funny. Gays are funny. Straights are funny. Women are funny. Men are funny. We are all funny, and we all do funny things. Let's laugh about it.

Don't be silly and don't waste your time.

I never had an aversion because I was active in the drama club. If I had that aversion I certainly wouldn't put myself in the position of being on stage. Of course, in the drama club you're hiding behind a character.

You shouldn't get too close to the truth, because then maybe you stop being funny.

Women are more emotional. They do get flustered. Which is not to say that men are better than they. It's simply the way it is.

One of the first things you ever learn as a stand-up is don't show fear.

But I really believe that if you have the ability, there is an obligation to make people laugh

I don't want to find the secret. I'm afraid all the joy will go out of it if I find the secret.

I am a minimalist. I like saying the most with the least.

Comedians are never really on vacation because you're always at attention... that antenna is always out there.

People with a sense of humor tend to be less egocentric and more realistic in their view of the world and more humble in moments of success and less defeated in times of travail.

I don't have a stack of scripts...

I think there are still words you can't use in family entertainment that you can use in a sitcom today.

Funny is funny is funny.

I love portraying the totally indifferent person.

The only thing I have never done is a Broadway play. I'm not sure I have the discipline necessary to do a Broadway play. I know it holds a fascination for certain actors.

Because of the spin-meisters and the focus groups and the way politics is run now. It's run by polls and focus groups. So it's even more true today, I think, than it was some 40 years ago.

A collison is what happens when two motorists go after the same pedestrian.

More and more, as I get older, people come up to me and say, 'Thank you for all the laughter.' And my standard answer is, 'It was my pleasure.' But that's the truth.

As an actor, you generally want to see the other actor's face.

I couldn't play off people that I don't personally like.

I don't know how many sacred cows there are today. I think there's a little confusion between humor and gross passing for humor. That's kind of regrettable.

I was not influenced by Jack Benny, and people have remarked on my timing and Jack's timing, but I don't think you can teach timing. It's something you hear in your head.

I'm one of those passengers who arrives at the airport five or six hours early so I can throw back a few drinks and muster up the courage to board the plane. Apparently I'm not alone because I've never been in an empty airport bar. I don't care what time you get there. Even at 8:00 a.m. you have to fight your way to the bar. At that hour, everyone drinks Bloody Marys so no one can tell it's booze- at least until they fall off their chair.

I've been married forty-five years. I think laughter is the secret.

All comedians are, in a way, anarchists. Our job is to make fun of the existing world.

You should have a value system. You can win if you stick with your value system.

Well, my career choice made a difference because I never would have met my wife, Jenny. I met her through comedian Buddy Hackett. He set us up on a blind date and then we got married.

All I can say about life is, 'Oh God, enjoy it!'

There's gratification in making somebody laugh. It's a wonderful sound. I find myself, to this day, doing it, wanting to make people laugh.

Well I was much too practical to presume to have a career in comedy.

I think there's a part, just a part of comedians, that is still childlike.

I worked in accounting for two and a half years, realized that wasn't what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, and decided I was just going to give comedy a try.

The best advice I could give someone trying to get into the comedy field is to take advantage of every opportunity you have to work to hone your skills.

I was influenced by every comedian I ever saw work. That's the only way you learn how to do it.

Television series are like the stock market. There's room for bears and bulls but no room for pigs.

In today's world, you would call my father mostly unaccessible. I'm not sure that isn't true of most fathers at that time. He went through the Depression. I don't know what that would have done to my psyche.

I wasn't much good. When I went into the line on a fake - I would holler 'I don't have it!'

One of the first things that you learn as a stand-up is, you're the boss. It's your stage, and don't screw with me because I'll make you look bad, which I had to do, because you wind up with drunks and loud people.

I think one reason for a successful marriage is laughter. I think laughter gets you through the rough moments in a marriage.

It was a decision to work clean. I just prefer to work that way. I have no problem with comedians who don't work that way. There was a temptation in the early '70s to reconsider. I decided against it.

I think you should be a child for as long as you can. I have been successful for 74 years being able to do that. Don't rush into adulthood, it isn't all that much fun.

There are a lot of questions I keep asking myself about why I do comedy. I guess I laugh to keep from crying. And I guess if you ever get me crying, I might not stop. This is the way I look at tragedy or else I'll cry.

Every new routine I have ever written and performed probably occurred extemporaneously. Then after you have fleshed it out and tried it out in front of a number of audiences and it works, you put it down on paper.

Stammering is different than stuttering. Stutterers have trouble with the letters, while stammerers trip over entire parts of a sentence. We stammerers generally think of ourselves as very bright. My own private theory is that stammerers have so many ideas swirling around their brains at once that they can't get them all out, though I haven't found any scientific evidence to back that up.

I still feel thirty, except when I try to run.

Cell phones have gotten so small, you can't tell who's a cell phone user and who's a schizophrenic.

When you're going for a joke, you're stuck out there if it doesn't work. There's nowhere to go. You've done the drum role and the cymbal clash and you're out on the end of the plank.

The only way to survive is to have a sense of humour.

Well, if you’re a native Chicagoan, you know how dumb he [Dr. Robert Hartley] is. He gets on the Ravenswood El, he goes past his stop on Sheridan Road, he gets off in Evanston, where the El is on the ground, and then he walks back 55 blocks to his apartment. Now, would you want to have that man as a psychologist? A man who misses his stop every day?

It's getting harder and harder to differentiate between schizophrenics and people talking on a cell phone. It still brings me up short to walk by somebody who appears to be talking to themselves.

Don't ever have two dogs. That way you won't know which one to blame.

I didn't need the elf outfit to play an elf; I could just play an elf.

Marriage and fatherhood heighten the disillusion that we all think we are born handy. We confidently believe that we can fix things around the house, as if it's part of the collective brain that was further enhanced by eighth-grade shop class.

I think everyone probably starts out sounding like someone else, but gradually you develop your own sound.

Continuing to do stand-up is always a challenge because the audiences and the environments in which you work very often differ.

The first time I got up in front of an audience was terror, abject terror, which continued for another four or five years. There still is, a little bit.

Doormen are kind of invisible, people don't know their names. They just say, Thank you, or Good morning. I'd never thought about doormen before. They're a vanishing breed. More electronic doors are being introduced.

This stammer got me a home in Beverly Hills, and I'm not about to screw with it now.

I gave up accounting. I went in for about six months writing ad copy. I was fired from that, and then another guy and I did a kind of poor man's Bob and Ray kind of syndicated radio show. Then I decided to stick it out and see what happened. I'd give it a year, a year became two years, and then two years became three years, and then along came the record album.

I'm very open to the up-and-comers.

I've done more than I thought I was ever going to do. I've had a very long and very satisfying career.

Laughter gives us distance. It allows us to step back from an event, deal with it and then move on.

The reason I'm a psychologist is based in part on my telephone routines. Much of my humor comes out of reaction to what other people are saying. A psychologist is a man who listens, who is sympathetic.

I'm most proud of the longevity of my marriage, my kids, and my grandchildren. If you don't have that, you really don't have very much.

I've been told to speed up my delivery when I perform. But if I lose the stammer, I'm just another slightly amusing accountant.

Jack Benny was, without a doubt, the bravest comedian I have ever seen work. He wasn't afraid of silence. He would take as long as it took to tell the story.

Sometimes you forget you're famous. You wonder, Why is that person staring at me?