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You think you're in another civilization, another time, and then you see antennas coming out of these hovels, and your mouth falls open when you see the descendants of the Incas shouting 'Columbo! Columbo!'
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When I go see a basketball game, I'm always in the front row. I always have a table at a restaurant; I never have trouble getting a taxi.
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You thought the stage, you thought Broadway: that was the pot at the end of the rainbow. The idea of being in Hollywood was like going to the Moon or Mars.
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They wouldn't take me in the navy because of my glass eye. So I joined the merchant navy, who allowed monocular crew if you worked in the kitchens. You're not wanted on deck or in the engine room with one eye, but you're good to fire up the ovens and cook hundreds of chops.
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If it wasn't for the Mark Twain Masquers, I don't know where my life would have gone.
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If I'm a guy reading a newspaper, and I hear this actor who I know gets great seats at basketball games, and he's complaining about being typecast, I think, 'Hey man, count your blessings.'
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If you were brought up in the '40s, a kid in Ossining, New York, hanging out at the poolroom and stealing, how can you think, 'Here I am in Ossining. I, too, can be a movie star!'
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I used to take girls out on a date to Night Court. And I'll tell you, most girls, they got a kick out of going to Night Court. 'Cause you get a lot of laughs... and it's cheap.
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I did do my own stunts.
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There isn't an Eskimo who doesn't love 'Columbo.'
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I had no idea when I graduated from high school and then from graduate school what I wanted to do with my life. I had no idea that I was ever going to be an actor.
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What wouldn't have happened to me if I hadn't ended up in Hartford, Connecticut.
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I didn't become an actor until I was an old man of 28 or 29. I declared to the world that I was an actor. Nobody heard me, but I did declare it.
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Initially, they wanted Columbo to wear a driving coat. I said: 'Are you kidding? He's not an English aristocrat.'
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I still get fan mail for Columbo.
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There's a bit of a problem. The script that I like, the network doesn't like. The script that they like, I don't like.
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I've been asked a few thousand times how much of Columbo is Falk and vice versa.
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The celebrity craze is a little much. But it's good for me, so you don't bite the hand that feeds you.
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I never turned a part down when they offered me money.
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I came to Hollywood and nobody knew me. I was on a coupla TV shows.
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I watch practically no TV - ah, what the hell do I watch? Oh, I was for a long time addicted to CNN.
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I thought actors were artists and that artists had to be European.
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Sometimes I was in school plays, but only when the kid they'd originally picked got sick and they asked me to substitute.
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I had two ambitions: One was to be in The Actors Studio, and the other was to walk into a bar where actors hung out, and everyone would know that I was a professional actor and I would be accepted.