Jerry Lewis Quotations

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

I never tell an audience what they can expect. I never have and I never will. I'm an entertainer for 75 years.

I don't want to be remembered. I want the nice words when I can hear them.

If you're an old pro, you know how well you're doing when you're doing it, and your inner government spanks you if you're not doing well.

Don't give me paper - I can get the same lawyer who drew it up to break it. But if you shake my hand, that's for life.

Pity? You don't want to be pitied because you're a cripple in a wheelchair? Stay in your house!

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.

Make film, shoot film, run film. Do something. Make film. Shoot anything.

When I was onstage doing the work, adrenaline killed the pain because I never hurt in front of an audience.

I tell young comics, 'Do you want this badly enough? It's there. But you have to go get it. And if you think I'm going to give you the key to the lock of that door, there is no key, there is no lock, and there is no door.'