Alan King Quotations

I don't mind being 65, but nobody is gonna tell me to come in at 5:30 to have the early bird special.

When I was in the hospital they gave me apple juice every morning, even after I told them I didn't like it. I had to get even. One morning, I poured the apple juice into the specimen tube. The nurse held it up and said, 'It's a little cloudy.' I took the tube from her and said, 'Let me run it through again,' and drank it. The nurse fainted.

The world is full of little dictators trying to run your life.

Museums are good things, places to look and absorb and learn.

My father was a dreamer - my hero. He was a smart, tough guy from Poland, a cutter of lady's handbags, an old socialist-unionist who always considered himself a failure. His big line was: 'Don't end up like me.'

I learned to cook in self-defense. My wife doesn't know what a kitchen is. In the first month of our marriage, she broiled lamb chops 26 nights in a row. Then I took over. I used to mind her not caring about food, but no more - as long as I can eat what I want.

Let's face it: It's difficult enough to be funny without worrying about what is going to offend whom.

My favorite way to spend Saturday is in and out of bed, watching sports on TV and eating.

Age, style, where you come from, where you were born, it's different every time, which, to me, is refreshing because it says that there isn't any one thing, one formula or kind of character that makes a great comedian. Everybody has had a different approach.

A summary of every Jewish holiday: They tried to kill us, we won, let's eat!

If you want to read about love and marriage, you've got to buy two separate books.

I can't stay friends with anyone who doesn't have a passion for something; and, generally speaking, artistic people, creative people carry it right into the kitchen, too. They have a zest for life; the excitement of living. All of the great eaters I've known are also men of great wit.

My mother's sister was killed in a trolley car accident, so I was raised as one of eight with my sister and six male cousins.

Banks have a new image. Now you have 'a friend,' your friendly banker. If the banks are so friendly, how come they chain down the pens?

Marriage is nature's way of keeping us from fighting with strangers.

It's not easy being a father, but I've been allowed a comeback.

I just never saw my mother in any other room but the kitchen. There were always pots going.

You only live once, except for Shirley MacLaine.

That's the great thing about New Year's, you get to be a year older. For me, that wasn't such a joke, because my birthday was always around this time. When I was a kid, my father used to tell me that everybody was celebrating my birthday. That's what the trees are all about.

And humor has always been a weapon. You want to get even on somebody? You want to attack somebody? Make fun of them.

Right when I started in show... Milton Berle was my first idol. When I was a kid, I went to see Milton at Lowe's State, and I never laughed so much, and I said, 'That's who I want to be; that's what I want to be.'

There's nobody to believe in anymore, nobody to trust.

Did you hear the one about the elderly Jew on his deathbed who sent for a priest, after declaring to his astonished relatives that 'I want to convert.' Asked why he would become a Catholic, after living all his life as a Jew, he answered: 'Better one of them should die than one of us.'

You do live longer with bran, but you spend the last fifteen years on the toilet.

Larry David finds a way to make jokes about the Holocaust. It would never have occurred to me. And it was funny.

Smoked salmon is for dinner. Belly lox is for breakfast. Don't get that mixed up.

Comedy is a reflection. We create nothing. We set no styles, no standards. We're reflections. It's a distorted mirror in the fun house. We watch society. As society behaves, then we have the ability to make fun of it.

We get the worrywart, the hypochondriac, the money-grubbing miser, the intractable negotiator... Some would say certain of these refer to the stereotypical, or 'stage' Jew. But objectively speaking, the only crime in humor is an unfunny joke.

There's a charm, there's a rhythm, there's a soul to Jewish humor. When I first saw Richard Pryor perform, I told him, 'You're doing a Jewish act.'

As you get older, as you become more sensitive, feel more, it becomes harder to make jokes. You censor yourself.

I made it, Ma - Carnegie Hall. And I didn't have to practice.

When I get up in the morning, I have to decide what I'm going to have for dinner or I can't get through the day.

I think one of the big things about comedy is the ability for the audience to identify.

I'm only... I'm only unhappy when the reviews are bad, but give me a good review and I'm a... I'm just screaming all over the place with joy.

My father helped me leave. He said, 'It's all out there, it's not here.'

One thing I've never said in my whole life is, 'Let's have dinner at a Japanese restaurant.'

Comedy is an amazing calling. Once you get that first laugh, it's hard to turn away. Then, of course, you're hooked and you have to learn how to survive in the business.

I had a sympathetic role in 'thirtysomething,' and in two weeks I'm going to do the role again. But in the movies, I just love the heavies. It's much more fun. Villains are a ball. People have been laughing at me for 50 years, so I love to sit in the back of the theater and listen to them hate me.

Milton took vaudeville, which, if you look up 'vaudeville' in the dictionary, right alongside of it, it says 'Milton Berle' - and he made it just a tremendous party.

When I read Dickens for the first time, I thought he was Jewish, because he wrote about oppression and bigotry, all the things that my father talked about.

If you stop and think about it, nearly all great humor is at the expense of someone or something.

My brother is the youngest member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons. And I wouldn't let him cut my nails.

My mother kept the house clean and we ate good. I didn't know we were poor until I started giving interviews.

My son says I never tell stories about anyone who's living.

When I was a kid, I used to send away for those ventriloquist kits on the back of comic books.

As a parent, I'd - I'd be a better father.

Ed Sullivan brought me to TV first in 1952, then Garry Moore's program gave me a lot of confidence and freedom.

Everything my mother made had to cook for 80 hours, and when she made matzoh balls she didn't know fluffy. Everything sank.

I won't eat in a place that has suits of armor.

If you keep yourself alive and current, funny is funny.

Performing is just standing up there and doing something. Performance takes on an edge to it. It has a more dramatic context.

The ability to absorb a book and make someone else's words and story your own was exactly was I was doing on stage.

My wife is a very attractive woman, and she's always worried about her diet. But she doesn't pay attention to me, and I don't pay attention to her. She's a vegetarian, and it drives me crazy.

I always plan dinner first thing in the morning. That's the only way I can get through the day, having a specific meal to look forward to at night.

I was a high school throw-out.

Modesty is not one of my virtues.

Eating takes a special talent. Some people are much better at it than others. In that way, it is like sex, and as with sex, it's more fun with someone who really likes it. I can't imagine having a lasting friendship with anyone who is not interested in food.

As life's pleasures go, food is second only to sex. Except for salami and eggs. Now that's better than sex, but only if the salami is thickly sliced.

You know you are getting old when people tell you how good you look.

The other day my house caught fire. My lawyer said, "Shouldn't be a problem. What kind of coverage do you have?" I said, "Fire and theft." The lawyer frowned. "Uh oh. Wrong kind. Should be fire OR theft."

We're glad that our bond package provides for growth, ... We certainly are going to need to build east elementary, and the enrollment figures reinforce that.

I don't think it's any secret. We can't continue to do business as we're currently doing it.

I was worried about the ground, and while I thought it was quicker than ideal, there was no jar.

Our growth this year is what we expected,

I think he has a hell of a chance on rain softened ground and he probably represents our best chance for a Festival victory.

Those enrollment figures reinforce the fact that we need to open the new high school as soon as possible,

We need to communicate and make it clear,

We could see a small increase as a result of that.

The way Blue Gene works its magic is the multiplicity of networks built into the back end. With 65,000 processors, an intelligent network was needed to work around system failures, so there was a lot of effort directed toward making this a reliable system as well as a fast and efficient one.

It's interesting to see Salisbury High School at over 1,000 students, ... It's good to see Salisbury at that level.

It was nice to see Chocolate outriding the Flat jockey.

Once they make their commitment, they have to stay with that commitment, ... They have to live with that decision.

Infrastructures that are too small for the number of students are not emphasized as much when you have block scheduling, because students only have to change classes about three times, as opposed to six,

However, even under the best of circumstances, four-year graduation rates for the next few years will be substantially lower than those in the three provinces.