Top 66 Carol Burnett Quotes

I love ‘Modern Family.’ And I love ‘Glee’ – the singing, the music – Jane Lynch just kills me.

Everybody I know who is funny, it’s in them. You can teach timing, or some people are able to tell a joke, though I don’t like to tell jokes. But I think you have to be born with a sense of humor and a sense of timing.

I never regretted turning down anything, I never regretted losing a job because I always felt something else was out there.

You have to go through the falling down in order to learn to walk. It helps to know that you can survive it. That’s an education in itself.

I love to write. I have always loved writing. That was my first love.

I love Maya Rudolph. She’s very multitalented herself.

I was raised going to the movies with my grandmother as a kid. And then I’d come home, and my best friend and I would act out the films that we saw.

I do the ‘New York Times’ crossword puzzle every morning to keep the old grey matter ticking.

Jimmy Stewart and Lucille Ball were so unique.

Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.

Adolescence is just one big walking pimple.

I had it in my contract with CBS, a very weird clause that was never written before and certainly not since, that if I wanted to do a variety show within the first five years of the contract, CBS would have to put it on for 30 shows.

When you have a dream, you’ve got to grab it and never let go.

It’s also selfish because it makes you feel good when you help others. I’ve been helped by acts of kindness from strangers. That’s why we’re here, after all, to help others.

But I don’t begrudge anybody, because I know how hard it is to have that dream and to make it happen, whether or not it’s just to put a roof over your head and food on the table.

I don’t eat much meat, fish, or poultry.

I love the writing. I love the idea of typing and seeing it on the computer and printing it out myself and, you know, moving sentences around. I like that.

When I was starting out in this business, that was the norm. You did it all. You looked around, and entertainers could dance, sing, play the piano, act, make you laugh.

My childhood was rough, we were poor and my parents were alcoholics, but nobody was mean. I knew I was loved. We were on welfare, but I never felt abandoned or unloved.

My grandmother and I would go see movies, and we’d come back to the apartment – we had a one-room apartment in Hollywood – and I would kind of lock myself in this little dressing room area with a cracked mirror on the door and act out what I had just seen.

My favourite comedian, of course, is Tim Conway. He has a way about him – being that belly-laugh kind of funny, and he has the improvisational skills, too. I’ve never seen anybody better.

I’m like your mother, your sister, whatever.

Because of YouTube, I’m getting fan mail from 10-year-olds and teenagers and college kids.

I was in California, and I was going to UCLA, and I knew I certainly didn’t have movie star looks. I remember seeing pictures and photos of Ethel Merman and Mary Martin, who were kind of average looking. I said, ‘Well, that’s for me, then, to go back to New York and try to be in musical comedy on Broadway.’

What I like to write about is stuff I know. I don’t think I could write a novel. I don’t think I have it in me to come up with those kinds of characters.

On the good days, my mother would haul out the ukulele and we’d sit around the kitchen table – it was a cardboard table with a linoleum top – and sing.

Edgy is fine – I’m not a prude by any stretch of the imagination – but what’s wrong with a good ol’ belly laugh? I miss that.

We all get where we’re going by circuitous journeys, and some of the setbacks are warranted.

I wish my mother had left me something about how she felt growing up. I wish my grandmother had done the same. I wanted my girls to know me.

It costs a lot to sue a magazine, and it’s too bad that we don’t have a system where the losing team has to pay the winning team’s lawyers.

Celebrity was a long time in coming; it will go away. Everything goes away.

I’ve always been able to recount things, and I have a really good memory about dialog and what people have said before and this and that.

Ask anyone who’s successful how they got there, you’re going to hear a different story.

I’m so happy with what has happened in my life.

I didn’t really get comfortable until I got to UCLA, and I had to take an acting course because I was studying theater arts.

I’m not always optimistic. You wouldn’t have all cylinders cooking if you were always like Mary Poppins.

It all happened the way it was supposed to. I wouldn’t change anything. I had such a great run.

I’m hooked on Glenn Close in ‘Damages.’

Giving birth is like taking your lower lip and forcing it over your head.

I am not a joke-teller. Stand-up, I couldn’t do.

As far as sitcoms go, I thought Jenna Elfman in ‘Dharma and Greg’ was a wonderful physical comedienne who had great timing.

I am not a person who yells at all, but I realized that I have always felt so good after doing the Tarzan yell, after doing Charo, or screaming as Eunice.

When things are a disappointment, try not to be so discouraged.

I never felt cynical, and I never felt that I couldn’t do what I wanted to do.

My grandmother and I saw an average of eight movies a week, double features, second run.

My first book was an open letter to my three daughters.

Steve Martin in ‘All of Me,’ when he did that whole thing where he was possessed by the spirit in his body? It was brilliant.

If I go to a party, I’m not one to be the funniest person in the room at all.

I do think there are some great female comics: Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph. They’re the whole ball of wax.

I have a great memory.

My grandmother and I followed my mother here, to a house a block north of Hollywood Boulevard but a million miles away from Hollywood, if you know what I mean. We would hang out behind the ropes and look at the movie stars arriving at the premieres.

I’m into ‘House of Cards.’ ‘Breaking Bad’ – my God, did I binge on that!

I have an iPhone, and I can text, and I can use the phone, and I can even take pictures with it.

It’s not a bad thing to be able to do many things onstage. If you’re an entertainer, you should be able to entertain. I’m proud to say that I’m not a one-trick pony.

I was once asked to do my Tarzan yell at Bergdorf Goodman, and a guard burst in with a gun! Now I only do it under controlled circumstances.

I think the hardest thing to do in the world, show-business-wise, is write comedy.

We don’t stop going to school when we graduate.

I wanted to be on Broadway, but in musical comedy.

But I didn’t ask to have somebody nose around in my private life. I didn’t even ask to be famous. All I asked was to be able to earn a living making people laugh.

I can’t tell a joke to save my soul. It’s just not my thing, though I love to listen to jokes.

I was kind of shy as a kid. I was a pretty good student. I was a wallflower, or nerd, if you will.

Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own.

I come from Texas, and my grandmother and mother were born in Arkansas.

I loved the Kennedy Center Honors because you just sit there, smile, wave, and cry.

I really enjoy connecting with the audience.

I struggled for a while, but when I was cast in an Off Broadway show called ‘Once Upon a Mattress,’ that kind of put me on the map.