Don Rickles Quotes

I have no idea what I'm going to say when I stand up to give a toast. But I do know that anything I say I find funny.

When you do see me, you'll get the idea from when you see me that it's all off the top of my head. A lot of it is a beginning, middle and the end. But it's different every night. I have a lot of jokes in my back pocket I've said over the years.

When you enter a room, you have to kiss his ring. I don't mind, but he has it in his back pocket.

When someone says to me, do you do stand-up I say absolutely not. I like to think of it as a theatrical performance. With me the show changes maybe five to ten percent every night. Of course, whatever I see in front of me and sometimes I get on a little run about it and it changes the show. And my delivery is such that people who have seen me many times say Gee, I never heard that before. Actually, they have, but I might have changed it around.

I was with George Washington at Valley Forge, sitting around before an attack... gimme a break. That's over 70 years ago already.

The man I adored, and miss him terribly, was Johnny Carson.

I don't really tell a joke per se, I build up an attitude and it becomes a joke.

My father wasn't much for show business. He was an insurance man - very well-liked, very warm. He had a lot of friends.

You throw your best punch, otherwise don't do it.

I was sitting in the toilet and I was by myself. I was tired of playing with the roller, so I said I'd better write a book.

I don't really tell a joke, I react to situations. The whole thing is just looking at somebody and showing all our weaknesses and exaggerating them, and that's how it becomes funny.

The thing I love about Vegas is that it's a melting pot. It's like working Ellis Island.

I was always the guy - out of insecurities, I was always making fun, even as a kid.

I'm not a big one for jokes. I can't tell a joke, believe it or not. If you gave me a thousand bucks and said, "Don, get up at a party and tell a joke," I'm the worst.

Well, I call myself an actor. I always wanted to be one.

They always use the word 'insult' with me, but I don't hurt anybody. I wouldn't be sitting here if I did. I make fun of everybody and exaggerate all our insecurities.

When you're 18, you're just so busy being scared and having fun - a crazy mixture - that you never thought of dying.

Political correctness? In my humor, I never talk about politics. I was never much into all that.

I've never been able to tell jokes. In the beginning of my career I did impressions and jokes like any other comedian, but I was never very successful because I did it poorly. So I started to talk to the audience and started talking about the atmosphere around me and started to become angry, not in a mean-spirited way, but in a fun way - and my attitude developed from there.

Everything I do on stage, I made up in saloons. I started doing it in front of people, and that became my performance. I never had writers.

My health, thank God, has kept my brain alive.

I take pride in being very unique in what I do. Nobody else can do what I do and I don't mean to say that egotistically, it's just something in my personality.

I knew most of the people there who ran the places, a lot of wiseguys. They're all gone now. All good people.

Every night when I go out on stage, there's always one nagging fear in the back of my mind. I'm always afraid that somewhere out there, there is one person in the audience that I'm not going to offend!

I always enjoy being full of fun, but I have my serious moments. Some women go for the studious kind of guy, I certainly was not that. If a girl is looking for somebody different and maybe a little more exciting for themselves - someone more on the fun side, I would suggest that they look for a type like Don Rickles.

An insult comic is the title I was given. What I do is exaggeration. I make fun of people, at life, of myself and my surroundings.

Show business is my life. When I was a kid I sold insurance, but nobody laughed.

I was nice to the people in the Philippines for the two and a half years I was there, because I knew even­tually I'd have to kiss up to them so my grandchildren could have toys.

It's just to break things up between stand-up gigs. I would only do it periodically. Maybe just an East Coast thing.

I have a problem, if the light goes on on TV and it blinks midnight, I don't know how to fix it.

Asians are nice people, but they burn a lot of shirts.

When I got out of high school, I wanted to be an actor but was getting a lot of rejections. I was getting rejected by life. My mother, God rest her soul, told me not to quit.

You can't study comedy; it's within you. It's a personality. My humor is an attitude.

Struggling is hard because you never know what's at the end of the tunnel.

I don't feel an obligation to give everyone a hard time, but when they're important people, it's fun.

Whatever you do to gain success, you have to hang in there and hope good things happen. Always think positive.

People think being in your seventies means sitting around in a chair with a blanket over your legs, drooling.

Who picks your clothes - Stevie Wonder?

Once in a while, when I'm alone, I think about my age. I think, How many more years do I have on this earth? But I can't really conceive of dying. Somehow, in my head, I don't think I'll die. I know that everybody dies, of course. I just think that it'll never come to me. It's crazy, but there it is.

I'm very shy so I became very outgoing to protect my shyness.

To this day, to this very day, except for television, I've never had a writer. Anything I've ever done on the stage, happened on the stage and I developed it from there. It started doing impressions and jokes - which I did very poorly. To this day I can't tell a joke. That sounds nuts, but it's true. I exaggerate it and it becomes a joke. Everything I've ever done I've done out on the stage and it became a performance over many many years.

I've never had a writer, and I'm proud of that. Everything I've per­formed has been from my own head.

I don't do impressions.

Italians are fantastic people, really. They can work you over in an alley while singing an opera.

I never could tell a joke. I just started talking to the audience, and when the drunks would yell, "Hey, when do the broads come on?" I got good at saying, "Relax. Clear your skin up first." They called me "the insult guy," but it's never mean-spirited. I'm just exaggerating everything about us and about life.

If I were to insult people and mean it, that wouldn't be funny.

I still think funny, and people young and old still come and see me. That's flattering. The day comes that they stop coming, then I'll know that it's time to retire to the Jewish ranch.

To me, the stand up part in my life is great. I know I can do that. When I get an acting chance, I'm really thrilled.