Once you're dead, your worries are over.
— Dick Van Dyke
It's more in my nature to be optimistic, I think. I'm one of those people who gets up on the right side of the bed in the morning.
I didn't even start dancing until I was in my thirties, and it was like flying.
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 married somebody half my age, and everybody thought I was crazy, but she is just an absolute angel.
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.
I'm always announcing my retirement. I'm still not retired.
I get little kids who recognize me from 'Mary Poppins,' and it just delights me because it's our third generation.
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'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.
When I was a kid, I loved all the silent comedians - Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, Chaplin. And I used to imitate them. I'd go to see a Buster Keaton movie and come home and try things out I'd seen. I learned to do pratfalls when I was very young.
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.
The secret to keeping moving is keeping moving.
'The Dick Van Dyke Show' was the most fun I ever had and the most creative period of my life.
'Mary Poppins' was one of the best experiences of my life.
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 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 have a beautiful, young wife who sings and dances, so there's a lot of duetting going on at my house.
Somebody sent me a British magazine listing the 20 worst dialects ever done in movies. I was No. 2, with the worst Cockney accent ever done. No. 1 was Sean Connery, because he uses his Scottish brogue no matter what he's playing.
I've made peace with insecurity... because there is no security of any kind.
I've always been a bit of an orphan, because actors say, 'Well, he's more of a dancer.' And dancers say, 'No. He's really a singer.' And singers say, 'No. He's an actor.'
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 got into a Broadway show before I ever sang and danced. I learned how after I got in the show.
I don't play golf. I have more fun singing and dancing.
I watch 'Al Jazeera.' They have news that you can't find anywhere else. They do great documentaries, too.
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 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 never had a lot of drive, but because I had family responsibilities, I had a lot of tenacity - the tenacity of a drowning man.
Put me on solid ground and I'll start tapping! At my age they say to keep moving.
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 sing and dance. That's my job.
I went from my mother to my wife. And to this day, I can't bear to be alone.
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 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.
Everyone should dance. And everyone should sing. People say, 'Well, I can't sing.' Everybody can sing. That you do it badly is no reason not to sing.
In Bernie Sanders, I see a man saying that the emperor has no clothes while everyone around him insists they see clothes. Whether or not he makes it to the White House, I hope and pray that everyone hears the alarm he is sounding now; it may be the last voice we ever hear.
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.
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.
My wife, as proud as she was of me, hated show business for good reasons. There was something about the spouse always being pushed out of the way, shoved aside. She wanted to get away from it.
I'm not a loner. I have to have a life partner.
Do you know that I was the anchor on the 'CBS Morning Show?' And my newsman was Walter Cronkite.
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 worked nightclubs all through my 20s, and I was a teetotaler.
Rob Petrie is who I really am - in personality and general ineffectiveness.
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 was the worst game show host that ever lived, and I knew it.
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.
My favorite unknown movie is 'The Comic.'
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.
