The Oscar made me a star, and I'm grateful. But I feel had I not won the Oscar I wouldn't have gotten into the messes I did in my personal life.

A lot of people forget that today. They come to the point where you walk on a set and the first thing you know you're looking at the sound man and you're saying to yourself, "How the hell can they get any sound when nobody is talking!" They get all mumbly. You can't make out what they're saying! And you're 6 feet away from them! Whereas in the old-time movies, you hear them, you understand every word they're saying, and you didn't have to put on your loudspeaker.

Gary Cooper - the greatest listener in the world! And he used to answer in kind, which is wonderful because you don't see that anymore. People don't listen. They really don't.

The Navy has changed a great deal. Not that the officers of my day were bad, because I served under a lot of good officers, believe me. But there were a few bad ones, too.

Today's work, I don't know it just doesn't make sense, a lot of it. It's just guns and sex and more guns and more sex. You say to yourself, when the hell are you gonna get down to the nitty-gritty and do something good so people can be entertained? I mean if they call this entertainment.

Every time you play one old-time picture along with today's kind of work, and they throw in the computers and the guns and the this and the that and the God-almighty, it gets to be a hassle and you wonder who the hell's doing what!

It was my mom who told me, "Ernie, if you make even one person happy with your smile or a funny thing you did every day, you'll have accomplished a great deal." And that's all I've ever tried to do.