Alan King Quotes

As life's pleasures go, food is second only to sex. Except for salami and eggs. Now that's better than sex, but only if the salami is thickly sliced.

Comedy is an amazing calling. Once you get that first laugh, it's hard to turn away. Then, of course, you're hooked and you have to learn how to survive in the business.

The ability to absorb a book and make someone else's words and story your own was exactly was I was doing on stage.

If you stop and think about it, nearly all great humor is at the expense of someone or something.

When I was a kid, I used to send away for those ventriloquist kits on the back of comic books.

Modesty is not one of my virtues.

You know you are getting old when people tell you how good you look.

I just never saw my mother in any other room but the kitchen. There were always pots going.

Smoked salmon is for dinner. Belly lox is for breakfast. Don't get that mixed up.

Eating takes a special talent. Some people are much better at it than others. In that way, it is like sex, and as with sex, it's more fun with someone who really likes it. I can't imagine having a lasting friendship with anyone who is not interested in food.

I don't mind being 65, but nobody is gonna tell me to come in at 5:30 to have the early bird special.

Performing is just standing up there and doing something. Performance takes on an edge to it. It has a more dramatic context.

I'm only ... I'm only unhappy when the reviews are bad, but give me a good review and I'm a ... I'm just screaming all over the place with joy.

Milton took vaudeville, which, if you look up 'vaudeville' in the dictionary, right alongside of it, it says 'Milton Berle' - and he made it just a tremendous party.

I think one of the big things about comedy is the ability for the audience to identify.

I had a sympathetic role in 'thirtysomething,' and in two weeks I'm going to do the role again. But in the movies, I just love the heavies. It's much more fun. Villains are a ball. People have been laughing at me for 50 years, so I love to sit in the back of the theater and listen to them hate me.

Banks have a new image. Now you have 'a friend,' your friendly banker. If the banks are so friendly, how come they chain down the pens?

When I read Dickens for the first time, I thought he was Jewish, because he wrote about oppression and bigotry, all the things that my father talked about.

That's the great thing about New Year's, you get to be a year older. For me, that wasn't such a joke, because my birthday was always around this time. When I was a kid, my father used to tell me that everybody was celebrating my birthday. That's what the trees are all about.

If you want to read about love and marriage, you've got to buy two separate books.

Let's face it: It's difficult enough to be funny without worrying about what is going to offend whom.

As a parent, I'd - I'd be a better father.

Everything my mother made had to cook for 80 hours, and when she made matzoh balls she didn't know fluffy. Everything sank.

Right when I started in show ... Milton Berle was my first idol. When I was a kid, I went to see Milton at Lowe's State, and I never laughed so much, and I said, 'That's who I want to be; that's what I want to be.'

When I was in the hospital they gave me apple juice every morning, even after I told them I didn't like it. I had to get even. One morning, I poured the apple juice into the specimen tube. The nurse held it up and said, 'It's a little cloudy.' I took the tube from her and said, 'Let me run it through again,' and drank it. The nurse fainted.

The world is full of little dictators trying to run your life.

Ed Sullivan brought me to TV first in 1952, then Garry Moore's program gave me a lot of confidence and freedom.

I always plan dinner first thing in the morning. That's the only way I can get through the day, having a specific meal to look forward to at night.

I won't eat in a place that has suits of armor.

Larry David finds a way to make jokes about the Holocaust. It would never have occurred to me. And it was funny.

My favorite way to spend Saturday is in and out of bed, watching sports on TV and eating.

Comedy is a reflection. We create nothing. We set no styles, no standards. We're reflections. It's a distorted mirror in the fun house. We watch society. As society behaves, then we have the ability to make fun of it.

If you keep yourself alive and current, funny is funny.

My mother's sister was killed in a trolley car accident, so I was raised as one of eight with my sister and six male cousins.

We get the worrywart, the hypochondriac, the money-grubbing miser, the intractable negotiator ... Some would say certain of these refer to the stereotypical, or 'stage' Jew. But objectively speaking, the only crime in humor is an unfunny joke.

I learned to cook in self-defense. My wife doesn't know what a kitchen is. In the first month of our marriage, she broiled lamb chops 26 nights in a row. Then I took over. I used to mind her not caring about food, but no more - as long as I can eat what I want.