Poverty can teach lessons that privilege cannot.

I was happy because I was acting. Most of the time for nothing. But I was learning and to learn that you can learn opens up the world for you.

I'm 83 and a half years old and I feel fine. I feel like a teenager but I'm unable to do a lot of the things that I used to do but I enjoy life to the fullest.

Fred Silverman, the head of ABC, he offered me a lot of comedy series but I told him I'd already been the best comedy series around, "The Odd Couple," and so when he saw that I did Quincy he called my agent and said, Jack turns me down? All my good series and he ends up playing an undertaker." And this was the HEAD of ABC series.

I always loved to gamble. I never got close to a horse. Fate dealt me a terrible blow when it gave me a good horse the first time out. I thought how easy this is. Now I love being around them.

The only tool we have as artists is selectivity. If you're a painter, you select the color, the lines, how severe they should be. As an actor you develop how angry you should be. You select how angry you should be. You listen to the other actor and then you react. In film, sometimes the other actor isn't even there. You have to play the scene. What I do is I call on my experience on the stage. I play the scene and I hope that I reach a certain level of integrity because that's what I learned on the stage.

Time is very important to art and if you don't have the time to select, art goes out the window.