Happy Birthday Dick Van Dyke!

I turned down some movies that were quite good. mainly on the basis of taste.

I married somebody half my age, and everybody thought I was crazy, but she is just an absolute angel.

I was lucky to get the kinds of parts I wanted. I always said I didn't want to do anything my kids can't see.

My career is over. I'm just playing now and having a great time. I like to keep busy, and I'm doing what's fun for me.

I watch 'Al Jazeera.' They have news that you can't find anywhere else. They do great documentaries, too.

I sing and dance. That's my job.

I've had a lot of writers, in particular, who said they got into writing because of the 'Van Dyke Show.' They said it looked like fun.

I've been talking about retiring for years. It's my standard answer to the question, 'What are your future plans?' The truth is, I'll always want to do things that are worthwhile or fun.

I've won several Emmys, a Tony and a Grammy, so maybe somebody will let me have an Oscar, and then I'll have a full set.

I wanted to be a radio announcer.

In the best of all worlds, the producers would take some responsibility for the kinds of things they're putting out. Unfortunately, they don't.

When I was a kid, I had ambitions for being a television announcer, which was before television took off, you know, in the late '40s. And just through necessity, going out looking for work, I was starting to sing, and dance, and act, and I never expected to do that, nor to have any success at it at least.

Jon Stewart kills me. I love him. And Bill Maher. He does an hour on HBO. But entirely political. It is awfully rough, but he does make me laugh.

I went from my mother to my wife. And to this day, I can't bear to be alone.

My kids are so much better parent than I was.

My brother and I laughed a lot as kids. We came up in the middle of the Depression, and neither one of us knew we were poor. We had nothing, but we didn't know it.

Oh, well, my first love is comedy or singing and dancing.

'The Dick Van Dyke Show' was the most fun I ever had and the most creative period of my life.

Rob Petrie is who I really am - in personality and general ineffectiveness.

Somebody asked what I wanted on my gravestone. I'm just going to put: 'Glad I Could Help.'

So as my kids will tell you, they had a pretty normal life.

I was a 'Laurel and Hardy' nut. I got to know Laurel at the end of his life, and it was a great thrill for me. He left me his bow tie and derby and told me that if they ever made a movie about him, he'd want me to play him.

When I started having kids, I thought, 'I don't want to do anything they can't watch.'

I do miss the rhythms of comedy. And I've never been able to perform very well without an audience. The sitcoms I've done had them. It was like doing a little play.

I like 'The Office.' I particularly like the British version with Ricky Gervais. Of course, I liked the 'Seinfeld' show a lot. I thought that was an awfully good show.

One day in '61, I was looking in the Santa Monica phone book for a number, and there it was: Stan Laurel, Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. I went over there and spent the afternoon with them. And pumped him with questions. I must have driven him crazy. I spent a lot of happy hours at Stan's house on Sundays just talking about comedy.

I think most people will tell you that. They can go along and, while they're denying that they are addicted, say it's stress this, it's this, it's that. But I - it's - I think - I really believe there is a gene. Some people become addicted and others don't.

Bob Hope, like Mark Twain, had a sense of humor that was uniquely American, and like Twain, we'll likely not see another like him.

I was always in show business but in many ways was not really of show business. I didn't move in show business circles, particularly, still don't do it.

No, no, it was the relationships. That was that group. People believed that Rob and Laura were really married in real life. You know, a lot of people believed that.

My son Barry, of course, has been on from the beginning. And his son Shane is playing now a med student regularly on the show. And at one point or another, I've had all four of his kids on the show.

As wonderful as they were, my parents didn't teach me anything about self-discipline, concentration, patience, or focus. If I hadn't had a family myself, I probably never would've done anything. Marriage taught me responsibility.

Probably one of the happiest moments, outside the birth of all of my kids, was the first time we won an Emmy, that the show won an Emmy. That was a big night.

I asked Fred Astaire once when he was about my age if he still danced, and he said 'Yes, but it hurts now.' That's exactly it. I can still dance, too, but it hurts now!

When I auditioned for 'Bye Bye Birdie' on Broadway, Gower Champion said, 'You've got the job!' I said, 'Mr. Champion, I can't dance.' He said, 'We'll teach you what you need to know.'

I've retired so many times now it's getting to be a habit.

I don't think we've got much of a chance to tell you the truth. But our main problem is our audience skews a little older than most shows, and I don't think our people can stay up that late. I certainly can't.

No, I did night clubs right here in Los Angeles. My partner, Phil Erickson, put me in the business, a guy from my home town, a dear friend who we just lost a couple of months ago.

Oh, I had an idea for a pilot of my own at the time, and then Carl sent me about eight scripts and simply I threw my idea out the window because the writing was just so good.

But I wish they would make a musical of some kind. I miss musicals so much. You don't see them anymore.

We had all week to rehearse. An audience would come in at the end of the week and we'd our little show. Most of the ad- libbing happened during the week on the show.

When I get some budding young comic who'll come up to me and say, 'What was it like to do it in those days?' I try to be as gracious to him as Stan Laurel was to me.

I'm always announcing my retirement. I'm still not retired.

I wrote a little autobiography about how luck has to do with everything. It's called 'My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business.' A publisher came to me and said, 'Write a book,' so I did. I wanted to call it 'Everybody Else Has Got a Book.'

I've made peace with insecurity... because there is no security of any kind.

They did ask me to do 'Dancing With The Stars;' I said I can do one show, but on that show you have to come up with a new number every week, and I told them that I think I'm a little past that stage.

I did a 'Golden Girls' once, which shot in front of an audience, and that went well. I had a good time. But I need an audience, for comedy at least.

All of us involved say 'The Dick Van Dyke Show' was the best five years of our lives. We were like otters at play.

I found out retirement means playing golf, or I don't know what the hell it means. But to me, retirement means doing what you have fun doing.

So at 16 I got a job at the local radio station. And I was working after school and weekends. I did the news; I did everything. I did - played records.

I got into a Broadway show before I ever sang and danced. I learned how after I got in the show.

Today, if you're not an alcoholic, you're nobody.

Women will never be as successful as men because they have no wives to advise them.

I have four children and I have seven grandkids.

But once we got on the air, everybody except Morey Amsterdam pretty much stuck to the script.

I loved to fall down.

I'm really in retirement. My career is over. I'm just playing now and having a great time. I like to keep busy, and I'm doing what's fun for me.

I played a killer twice. Once on 'Matlock,' on Andy Griffith's show, I got to play the killer.

I get little kids who recognize me from 'Mary Poppins,' and it just delights me because it's our third generation.

'Mary Poppins' was one of the best experiences of my life.

Once you get the kids raised and the mortgage paid off and accomplish what you wanted to do in life, there's a great feeling of: 'Hey, I'm free as a bird.'

A lot of violence, a lot of gore in it, and I just didn't want to do that kind of thing.

Put me on solid ground and I'll start tapping! At my age they say to keep moving.

Do you know that I was the anchor on the 'CBS Morning Show?' And my newsman was Walter Cronkite.

I think it's being thrown at the wolves, we call it in our business.

Emotionally, I'm about 13.

There's a lot of very funny people I'd love to work with that I've never met, of course. I love Steve Martin and Jim Carrey.

I grew up in Danville, Illinois, right in the middle of the state.

I never wanted to be an actor, and to this day I don't. I can't get a handle on it. An actor wants to become someone else. I am a song-and-dance man, and I enjoy being myself, which is all I can do.

I learned everything that I know about comedy and about show business and a lot about life from Carl.

I wanted to be Stan Laurel, then I wanted to be Fred Astaire and then Captain Kangaroo. I actually started out as a radio announcer when I was 17 and never left the business, so that's literally 70 years.

I never made a good movie.

I think, the 'Van Dyke Show' and 'Mary Poppins' are two of the best periods of my life. I had so much fun, I didn't want it to end.

I worked nightclubs all through my 20s, and I was a teetotaler.

I don't play golf. I have more fun singing and dancing.

My favorite unknown movie is 'The Comic.'

I never had a lot of drive, but because I had family responsibilities, I had a lot of tenacity - the tenacity of a drowning man.

So I think we're kind of an alternate choice for people who have had it with sex and violence.

I have four kids, seven grandkids, and four great-grandkids. Maybe I can become a great-great-grandfather if I hang on!

Stan said he used to keep Hardy late, make him miss his golf game, and really get him mad.

In my seventies, I exercised to stay ambulatory. In my eighties, I exercise to avoid assisted living.

You know, I'm almost out of the habit of watching episodic television now.

I was the worst game show host that ever lived, and I knew it.

I don't have any children; I have four middle-aged people.