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.

Florida is a very healing place.

Gator [ McKlusky from White Lightning] was a criminal and a felon, but he had a good heart - he's probably a cousin to Bo. Bo was not a felon and definitely never wanted to hurt anybody - the final scene confirms that. He confesses to Buford T. Justice that he is right behind him. Gator McKlusky would not have done that.

You get to a certain age, where you know you can't go over the wall, but I'll never get to the age where I can't go through it.

Jay Leno is wonderful and a good friend, but it will always be the Carson show to a lot of people.

All of the younger actors keep coming up to me and asking me where all of the land mines are because they know I've stepped on them all.

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.