When you're a kid, you lay in the grass and watch the clouds going over, and you literally don't have a thought in your mind. It's purely meditation, and we lose that.
So at 16 I got a job at the local radio station. And I was working after school and weekends. I did the news; I did everything. I did - played records.
I have four kids, seven grandkids, and four great-grandkids. Maybe I can become a great-great-grandfather if I hang on!
My son Barry, of course, has been on from the beginning. And his son Shane is playing now a med student regularly on the show. And at one point or another, I've had all four of his kids on the show.
I asked Fred Astaire once when he was about my age if he still danced, and he said 'Yes, but it hurts now.' That's exactly it. I can still dance, too, but it hurts now!
I don't think parents can protect their kids in this media-nut culture.
I've made peace with insecurity... because there is no security of any kind.
Probably one of the happiest moments, outside the birth of all of my kids, was the first time we won an Emmy, that the show won an Emmy. That was a big night.
So I think we're kind of an alternate choice for people who have had it with sex and violence.
The secret to keeping moving is keeping moving.
I found out retirement means playing golf, or I don't know what the hell it means. But to me, retirement means doing what you have fun doing.
Oh, I had an idea for a pilot of my own at the time, and then Carl sent me about eight scripts and simply I threw my idea out the window because the writing was just so good.
'The Dick Van Dyke Show' was the most fun I ever had and the most creative period of my life.
Do you know that I was the anchor on the 'CBS Morning Show?' And my newsman was Walter Cronkite.
When I was a kid, I had ambitions for being a television announcer, which was before television took off, you know, in the late '40s. And just through necessity, going out looking for work, I was starting to sing, and dance, and act, and I never expected to do that, nor to have any success at it at least.
I'm kind of proud of being a love child.
Put me on solid ground and I'll start tapping! At my age they say to keep moving.
Pandering to the scandal hungry public is a total lack of responsible journalism.
I can't work with my brother without laughing.
So as my kids will tell you, they had a pretty normal life.
It's quite hard to act yourself all the time.
Somebody asked what I wanted on my gravestone. I'm just going to put: 'Glad I Could Help.'
I never even had a bachelorhood: I went straight from my parents' home to a marriage.
For some reason, as time gets short in life, wasting time escaping through entertainment bothers me.
I did a 'Golden Girls' once, which shot in front of an audience, and that went well. I had a good time. But I need an audience, for comedy at least.
I never wanted to be an actor, and to this day I don't. I can't get a handle on it. An actor wants to become someone else. I am a song-and-dance man, and I enjoy being myself, which is all I can do.
Just knowing you don't have the answers is a recipe for humility, openness, acceptance, forgiveness, and an eagerness to learn - and those are all good things.
When I auditioned for 'Bye Bye Birdie' on Broadway, Gower Champion said, 'You've got the job!' I said, 'Mr. Champion, I can't dance.' He said, 'We'll teach you what you need to know.'
They did ask me to do 'Dancing With The Stars;' I said I can do one show, but on that show you have to come up with a new number every week, and I told them that I think I'm a little past that stage.
I was 5 years old when the stock market crashed; I lost everything.
I'm not cantankerous.
My kids are so much better parent than I was.
As wonderful as they were, my parents didn't teach me anything about self-discipline, concentration, patience, or focus. If I hadn't had a family myself, I probably never would've done anything. Marriage taught me responsibility.
Working with my son was like falling off a log. I had so much fun doing it.
When I was a kid, I had ambitions for being a television announcer, which was before television took off, you know, in the late '40s.
Everyone should dance. And everyone should sing. People say, 'Well, I can't sing.' Everybody can sing. That you do it badly is no reason not to sing.
There are no sure answers, only better questions.
Divorce is something that I never dreamed would happen to me. But it did.
I played a killer twice. Once on 'Matlock,' on Andy Griffith's show, I got to play the killer.
I think the saddest moment in my life just happened two months ago. My old nightclub partner passed away, Phil Erickson down in Atlanta. He - I owe him everything. He put me in the business and taught me about everything I know.
That rule about having to act one's age? I just don't buy it.
I love to harmonize.
I love musicals, but I find it's just so deadening. You know, 30 takes, you do a little piece here and a little piece there. There's hours and hours of waiting. And to me, that's as far away from real performance as you can get.
Jon Stewart kills me. I love him. And Bill Maher. He does an hour on HBO. But entirely political. It is awfully rough, but he does make me laugh.
When I was a kid, I loved all the silent comedians - Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, Chaplin. And I used to imitate them. I'd go to see a Buster Keaton movie and come home and try things out I'd seen. I learned to do pratfalls when I was very young.
Don't worry so much. Most of the things you worry about never end up happening.
Oh, well, my first love is comedy or singing and dancing.
When I get some budding young comic who'll come up to me and say, 'What was it like to do it in those days?' I try to be as gracious to him as Stan Laurel was to me.
My favorite unknown movie is 'The Comic.'
