“Museums are good things, places to look and absorb and learn.”
― Alan King
“You do live longer with bran, but you spend the last fifteen years on the toilet.”
― Alan King
“When I was in the hospital they gave me apple juice every morning, even after I told them I didn’t like it. I had to get even. One morning, I poured the apple juice into the specimen tube. The nurse held it up and said, ‘It’s a little cloudy.’ I took the tube from her and said, ‘Let me run it through again,’ and drank it. The nurse fainted.”
― Alan King
“A summary of every Jewish holiday: They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat!”
― Alan King
“Did you hear the one about the elderly Jew on his deathbed who sent for a priest, after declaring to his astonished relatives that ‘I want to convert.’ Asked why he would become a Catholic, after living all his life as a Jew, he answered: ‘Better one of them should die than one of us.’”
― Alan King
“I don’t mind being 65, but nobody is gonna tell me to come in at 5:30 to have the early bird special.”
― Alan King
“My mother’s sister was killed in a trolley car accident, so I was raised as one of eight with my sister and six male cousins.”
― Alan King
“When I was a kid, I used to send away for those ventriloquist kits on the back of comic books.”
― Alan King
“My brother is the youngest member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons. And I wouldn’t let him cut my nails.”
― Alan King
“I made it, Ma – Carnegie Hall. And I didn’t have to practice.”
― Alan King
“I had a sympathetic role in ‘thirtysomething,’ and in two weeks I’m going to do the role again. But in the movies, I just love the heavies. It’s much more fun. Villains are a ball. People have been laughing at me for 50 years, so I love to sit in the back of the theater and listen to them hate me.”
― Alan King
“Smoked salmon is for dinner. Belly lox is for breakfast. Don’t get that mixed up.”
― Alan King
“My father was a dreamer – my hero. He was a smart, tough guy from Poland, a cutter of lady’s handbags, an old socialist-unionist who always considered himself a failure. His big line was: ‘Don’t end up like me.’”
― Alan King
“There’s nobody to believe in anymore, nobody to trust.”
― Alan King
“My son says I never tell stories about anyone who’s living.”
― Alan King
“I can’t stay friends with anyone who doesn’t have a passion for something; and, generally speaking, artistic people, creative people carry it right into the kitchen, too. They have a zest for life; the excitement of living. All of the great eaters I’ve known are also men of great wit.”
― Alan King
“Marriage is nature’s way of keeping us from fighting with strangers.”
― Alan King
“If you want to read about love and marriage, you’ve got to buy two separate books.”
― Alan King
“Banks have a new image. Now you have ‘a friend,’ your friendly banker. If the banks are so friendly, how come they chain down the pens?”
― Alan King
“Modesty is not one of my virtues.”
― Alan King
“Comedy is a reflection. We create nothing. We set no styles, no standards. We’re reflections. It’s a distorted mirror in the fun house. We watch society. As society behaves, then we have the ability to make fun of it.”
― Alan King
“You only live once, except for Shirley MacLaine.”
― Alan King
“The world is full of little dictators trying to run your life.”
― Alan King
“I think one of the big things about comedy is the ability for the audience to identify.”
― Alan King
“It’s not easy being a father, but I’ve been allowed a comeback.”
― Alan King
“As a parent, I’d – I’d be a better father.”
― Alan King
“We get the worrywart, the hypochondriac, the money-grubbing miser, the intractable negotiator… Some would say certain of these refer to the stereotypical, or ‘stage’ Jew. But objectively speaking, the only crime in humor is an unfunny joke.”
― Alan King
“Let’s face it: It’s difficult enough to be funny without worrying about what is going to offend whom.”
― Alan King
“If you stop and think about it, nearly all great humor is at the expense of someone or something.”
― Alan King
“Milton took vaudeville, which, if you look up ‘vaudeville’ in the dictionary, right alongside of it, it says ‘Milton Berle’ – and he made it just a tremendous party.”
― Alan King
“Right when I started in show… Milton Berle was my first idol. When I was a kid, I went to see Milton at Lowe’s State, and I never laughed so much, and I said, ‘That’s who I want to be; that’s what I want to be.’”
― Alan King
“I’m only… I’m only unhappy when the reviews are bad, but give me a good review and I’m a… I’m just screaming all over the place with joy.”
― Alan King
“And humor has always been a weapon. You want to get even on somebody? You want to attack somebody? Make fun of them.”
― Alan King
“There’s a charm, there’s a rhythm, there’s a soul to Jewish humor. When I first saw Richard Pryor perform, I told him, ‘You’re doing a Jewish act.’”
― Alan King
“The ability to absorb a book and make someone else’s words and story your own was exactly was I was doing on stage.”
― Alan King
“When I read Dickens for the first time, I thought he was Jewish, because he wrote about oppression and bigotry, all the things that my father talked about.”
― Alan King
“That’s the great thing about New Year’s, you get to be a year older. For me, that wasn’t such a joke, because my birthday was always around this time. When I was a kid, my father used to tell me that everybody was celebrating my birthday. That’s what the trees are all about.”
― Alan King
“Age, style, where you come from, where you were born, it’s different every time, which, to me, is refreshing because it says that there isn’t any one thing, one formula or kind of character that makes a great comedian. Everybody has had a different approach.”
― Alan King
“Comedy is an amazing calling. Once you get that first laugh, it’s hard to turn away. Then, of course, you’re hooked and you have to learn how to survive in the business.”
― Alan King
“When I get up in the morning, I have to decide what I’m going to have for dinner or I can’t get through the day.”
― Alan King
“One thing I’ve never said in my whole life is, ‘Let’s have dinner at a Japanese restaurant.’”
― Alan King
“Everything my mother made had to cook for 80 hours, and when she made matzoh balls she didn’t know fluffy. Everything sank.”
― Alan King
“I won’t eat in a place that has suits of armor.”
― Alan King
“I just never saw my mother in any other room but the kitchen. There were always pots going.”
― Alan King
“My wife is a very attractive woman, and she’s always worried about her diet. But she doesn’t pay attention to me, and I don’t pay attention to her. She’s a vegetarian, and it drives me crazy.”
― Alan King
“My mother kept the house clean and we ate good. I didn’t know we were poor until I started giving interviews.”
― Alan King
“My father helped me leave. He said, ‘It’s all out there, it’s not here.’”
― Alan King
“I was a high school throw-out.”
― Alan King
“Ed Sullivan brought me to TV first in 1952, then Garry Moore’s program gave me a lot of confidence and freedom.”
― Alan King
“Larry David finds a way to make jokes about the Holocaust. It would never have occurred to me. And it was funny.”
― Alan King
“As you get older, as you become more sensitive, feel more, it becomes harder to make jokes. You censor yourself.”
― Alan King
“Performing is just standing up there and doing something. Performance takes on an edge to it. It has a more dramatic context.”
― Alan King
“If you keep yourself alive and current, funny is funny.”
― Alan King
“My favorite way to spend Saturday is in and out of bed, watching sports on TV and eating.”
― Alan King
“I learned to cook in self-defense. My wife doesn’t know what a kitchen is. In the first month of our marriage, she broiled lamb chops 26 nights in a row. Then I took over. I used to mind her not caring about food, but no more – as long as I can eat what I want.”
― Alan King
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