You often hear that people go into show business to find the love they never had when they were children. Never believe it! Every comic and most of the actors I know had a childhood full of love. Then they grew up and found out that in the grown-up world, you don't get all that love, you just get your share. So they went into show business to recapture the love they had known as children when they were the center of the universe.

Nothing is free. You got to pay to be in society. First you start with homework.

I try to give my work everything I've got, because when you're dead or you're out of the business or you're in an old actors' home somewhere, if you've done a good job, your work will still be 16 years old and dancing and healthy and pirouetting and arabesquing all over the place. And they'll say, "That's who he is! He's not this decaying skeleton."

Sir, I have seen your film and it is vulgar! Madame, my film rises below vulgarity.

I wanted to entertain so badly that I kept at it until I was good. I just browbeat my way into show business.

I was out in the combat engineers. We would throw up bridges in advance of the infantry but mainly we would just throw up.

With the birth of the artist came the inevitable afterbirth... the critic