ANDY KAUFMAN

There's no drama like wrestling.

If I play my cards right, I could bring network wrestling back to TV. Unfortunately, to most people, wrestling is a laughingstock. But fortunately, I'm reaching people who otherwise wouldn't watch it.

While all the other kids were out playing ball and stuff, I used to stay in my room and imagine that there was a camera in the wall. And I used to really believe that I was putting on a television show and that it was going out to somewhere in the world.

There's no way to describe what I do. It's just me.

When I perform, it's very personal. I'm sharing things I like, inviting the audience into my room.

What's real? What's not? That's what I do in my act, test how other people deal with reality.

My mother sent me to psychiatrists since the age of four because she didn't think little boys should be sad. When my brother was born, I stared out the window for days. Can you imagine that?

Pure entertainment is not an egotistical lady singing boring songs onstage for two hours and people in tuxes clapping whether they like it or not. It's the real performers on the street who can hold people's attention and keep them from walking away.

I just want real reactions. I want people to laugh from the gut, be sad from the gut - or get angry from the gut.

I never told a joke in my life.

It's not that I was crazy. It's just that I was sad at times because the world was sad at times. When I would perform, it wasn't sad anymore.

Clifton and I don't even look alike. He smokes and drinks, and I do neither. He's a big fat guy, and if it weren't for me, no one would know who he is.

I'm just singing a song, and if people want to laugh, that's their business.

Any wrestler who will piledrive Lawler and injure him like he did me gets five thousand dollars from me!

Every time my manager approached big network executives or even cable, they told him I was too dangerous. They couldn't trust me.

Tank you veddy much.

I thought Doodyville was inside of the television. You know, like, if television was this box - and if I went inside the box that was a television, I'd be in Doodyville.

I would like to do the Elvis Presley.

If I was going to be a little boy about it, I'd go into hiding for one or two years. But if I was going to be a man about it, it'd be 20 or 30 years.

My parents would say, 'Why don't you go out and play?' and I would say, 'I can't! I'm putting on my shows!'

I just want the audience to have a wonderful, happy feeling inside them and leave with big smiles on their faces.

I'm having everything. I'm a vegetarian, too. But in my mother's house, I eat whatever I'm served.

The more they hate you, the better you're doing.

I'm from Hollywood. That's where we make movies and TV shows... I'm not from down here in men-fus ten-uh-see, okay?

I try to please people, to give them a good time, but I refuse to make my act conform to traditional show-biz standards of entertainment. There's a little voice that says, 'Oh, no, you can't do that, that's breaking all the rules.' That's the voice of show business. Then this other little voice says, 'Try it.' And most of the time, when the voice comes on and says, 'No,' that's the time it works.