The Gong Show provided me with five years of the happiest times of my life, but that's that. And to be known as the guy who gave the world The Gong Show - listen, my Uncle George isn't known as anything. So I guess it isn't so bad in that context.

Spontaneity is such an entertaining facet of show business.

Television is not my favorite medium, my favorite form of entertainment. Certainly game shows aren't. I don't watch reality shows at all.

I went out and started on my way up in television. I wrote music, I wrote books, I played an instrument half-ass. I would always have liked to play in a band. I would always have liked to be a substantial writer, to write country music for big singers. I had all sorts of proclivities, but I never had any big success.

Fifty percent of something is better than than one hundred percent of nothing.

I could never do a show, or be a personality like Howard Stern, where you take all that heat from critics. What he does, he does, but the critical heat would crucify me.

When you are young, your potential is infinite. You might do anything, really. You might be Einstein. You might be DiMaggio. Then you get to an age where what you might be gives way to what you have been. You weren't Einstein. You weren't anything. That's a bad moment.