Celebrity was a long time in coming; it will go away. Everything goes away.

But I didn't ask to have somebody nose around in my private life. I didn't even ask to be famous. All I asked was to be able to earn a living making people laugh.

I'm glad I was born when I was. My time was the golden age of variety. If I were starting out again now, maybe things would happen for me, but it certainly would not be on a variety show with 28 musicians, 12 dancers, two major guest stars, 50 costumes a week by Bob Mackie - the networks just wouldn't spend the money today.

You have to go through the falling down in order to learn to walk. It helps to know that you can survive it. That's an education in itself.

I couldn't get the laughter out of my head. It wasn't career. It wasn't even a choice. It was a calling.

I've always been able to recount things and I have a really good memory about dialog and what people have said before and this and that.

No matter what, when you major in theater arts whether you want to write or be a director or design scenery or whatever, when you are a freshman at UCLA then - I guess it's still the same way - you had to take an acting class.