Bob Newhart Quotes
-
I can't do a one-camera show. I don't know how to do that kind of show where you count in your head and then you do the next line.
-
Dick Martin, if you put a gun to his forehead, he couldn't tell you a joke.
-
I remember seeing a movie with Jose Ferrer and Rosemary Clooney where they were husband and wife, and they got in bed, and he had on polka-dot pajamas and she had on striped pajamas, and when they got up the next morning he had on the striped pajamas and she had the polka dot pajamas, and that was considered racy at that time!
-
The acting is better when you know your material is being judged.
-
The greatest comedian I've ever seen is Jack Benny. He wasn't afraid of the silences.
-
I'm most proud of the longevity of my marriage, my kids, and my grandchildren. If you don't have that, you really don't have very much.
-
There is an edginess in my work that people don't always recognize.
-
A lot of money is spent trying to keep people alive who don't necessarily want to be alive.
-
Don Rickles and I are best friends. I know that might seem strange to those who know Don only by reputation, but somebody has to be his friend. Just to make sure I don't forget, Don gave me a doormat that sits just outside the front door of my house. It reads: 'The Newharts: The Rickleses Best Friends.'
-
Don't live in the past. There's no point. You can't change anything. What a waste of time.
-
I was never a Certified Public Accountant... I just had a degree in accounting. The reason I was never a Certified Public Accountant was because it would require passing a test, which I would not have been able to do.
-
Humor is so important to the American scene throughout history.
-
All I can say about life is, 'Oh God, enjoy it!'
-
I always hated when the studios just kind of said that anybody can act. You look at people like Spencer Tracy, Henry Fonda - and I'm just talking about the male actors - there aren't a lot who can act. It's a very special talent, and I wish it were recognized as a very special talent.
-
No matter what hyenas sound like, they are not actually laughing.
-
I found the most difficult thing when you became successful - when I had the record album, it won Album of the Year - that you were cut off from the source of your material. Your material was everyday people, and you were kind of cut off from that, and you had to work at it.
-
Well I was much too practical to presume to have a career in comedy.
-
For some reason, comedians are still children. The social skills somehow never reach us, so we say exactly what we think without weighing the results.
-
I think there's a part, just a part of comedians, that is still childlike.
-
I don't have a stack of scripts.
-
There was a sea of change in comedy in the late 1950s and '60s. We were dealing with vignettes as opposed to jokes. We were more socially aware.
-
There isn't a comedian in the world that hasn't bombed.
-
I don't know how doctors pick one specialty over another. Some you can understand. Pediatricians. Or gynecologists delivering babies, bringing a new life into the world, but how does someone want to be a proctologist? How can you fall in love with proctology?
-
When I started, I was doing all the good comedians I'd ever seen. Then I developed my own voice. My routines are my natural way of looking at the world.