DICK CAVETT

I have yet to see one of those Comedy Central shows with multiple standup comics that doesn't include someone the size of the Hindenburg.

I'm not the guy with the enormous comedy nose or the big feet or the bad posture or the whatever; a physical comic has certain things.

I've actually gotten so I don't associate television with entertainment very much.

While other kids were out playing and doing healthy things, I read an ancient judo book with a neck hold that was fatal to so many people, they finally dropped it from judo.

Teaching is an art and a profession requiring years of training.

There's so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?

When I'm doing an appearance somewhere and taking questions from the audience, I can always count on: 'Tell about the guy who died on your show!'

I think we live in an age of increasing mediocrity.

Running my show is really like an actor being in repertory but where, in one day in one performance, you do scenes from a drama, a farce, a low comedy and a tragedy.

If I were running a campaign, I'd urge taking the mountain of money reportedly squandered on pizza, coffee and bagels and spending it more wisely - on a talented young comedy writer.

I like when the ice gets thin, the going gets rough, the guests get edgy.

The greatest benefit of depression is the fact that when I have talked about it, every so often someone comes up and says, 'You saved my dad's life.'

I'm not all that enthralled by show business, and I'm not that much of a highbrow.

Comedians are sometimes resentful of their writers. Probably because it's hard for giant egos to admit you need anyone but yourself to be what you are.

I have never been converted to or even had much interest in spiritualism, occultism, Swedenborgianism or any particular religion. And I never, except occasionally for a laugh, visit the quacks who call themselves psychics.

As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it.

I hate Danny Kaye movies.

Every writer knows that unless you were born gifted with either supreme confidence or outsize ego, handing in your work holds, in some cases, admitted terror. If that's too strong, at least fairly high anxiety.

The very phrase 'Oscar night' used to accelerate my pulse. For one thing - dating myself - it meant Bob Hope. He always had good, strong jokes, that faultless delivery, and always a new joke about his own films' failure - once again - to be honored.

I haven't ever found any great writing on that wonderful and often unappreciated art form, the insult.

It's no fun being a specimen.

William F. Buckley was a man who had a great capacity for fun and for amusing himself by amazing others.

In the main, ghosts are said to be forlorn and generally miserable, if not downright depressed. The jolly ghost is rare.

Every time I nostalgically try to regain my liking of John McCain, he reaches into his sleaze bag and pulls out something malodorous.

Being the offspring of English teachers is a mixed blessing. When the film star says to you, on the air, 'It was a perfect script for she and I,' inside your head you hear, in the sarcastic voice of your late father, 'Perfect for she, eh? And perfect for I, also?'