I don't do jokes. The characters are my jokes.

I began painting well before I started doing comedy. In fact, when I came out of the war in 1946, I enrolled in art school in Dayton, Ohio. I painted for three years, and then show business took hold.

If your ship doesn't come in, swim out to it.

I have never pretended to be any kind of super-religious kind of man, but I feel very strongly that you can be funny without being dirty.

I don't do jokes. The characters are my jokes.

As a kid, I always wanted to be lots of things. I was a Walter Mitty type. I wanted to be in the French Foreign Legion, a detective, a doctor, a test pilot with a scarf, a fisherman who hauled in a tremendous marlin after a 12-hour fight.

I have a photographic memory; I just haven't developed it yet.