Trans Am sales went up 70 percent after Smokey and the Bandit, and I was promised a free car every year for life by the Pontiac president.

But then when I'm in a halfway successful movie, it irritates the hell out of the critics in New York, because they'd like to kill my pictures if they could. So maybe I'm pretty good in the movie. Then they use all these words like I'm 'surprisingly' good, or 'shockingly enough,' I'm good. It's like I crawled out from under a magazine and they're surprised I can act.

Having done 300 television shows and almost 60 movies, I'm tired of having guys who are younger than some sandwiches I've had, telling me to turn left at the couch. There's no appreciation of actors and no sense of history.

If you hold on to things long enough, they get back into style. Like me.

Florida is a very healing place.

I'm terrified of marriage. I'm terrified of not doing something so important and at the same time I think you shouldn't rush into these things.

It was a bit of a lark when I agreed to do [Smokey and the Bandit], and I knew we'd have fun if we could get Jackie Gleason.