Bob Newhart

“All I can say about life is, 'Oh God, enjoy it!'”

“More and more, as I get older, people come up to me and say, 'Thank you for all the laughter.' And my standard answer is, 'It was my pleasure.' But that's the truth.”

“I think that what comes through in Chicago humor is the affection. Even though you're poking fun at someone or something, there's still an affection for it.”

“Well I was much too practical to presume to have a career in comedy.”

“You may have done 20 great shows in a row and come to one, and it doesn't work. You never presume anything.”

“The first time I heard Richard Pryor, I knew he would be a major force in the world of comedy.”

“You do a clean show and it's over and the audience have enjoyed themselves and you've enjoyed yourself, and you haven't had to resort to shock.”

“It's kind of hard coming from 'Saturday Night Live,' which is a sketch-driven show, to a movie.”

“I don't have a stack of scripts.”

“I don't have a stack of scripts that, when I get home, studios are clamoring, saying, 'Has Bob read ours yet?'”

“I have to warn you, I'm not just some sitcom guy. I'm now an author.”

“I think the thing about it is when you grow up in Chicago there's such a thing as putting on airs, you know? And you just learn not to put on airs. Don't act like, 'Oh boy, I'm somebody.' Th...”

“For some reason, comedians are still children. The social skills somehow never reach us, so we say exactly what we think without weighing the results.”

“There was a sea of change in comedy in the late 1950s and '60s. We were dealing with vignettes as opposed to jokes. We were more socially aware.”

“Sometimes you forget you're famous. You wonder, 'Why is that person staring at me?'”

“Stammering is different than stuttering. Stutterers have trouble with the letters, while stammerers trip over entire parts of a sentence. We stammerers generally think of ourselves as very b...”

“I left 'The Bob Newhart Show,' which was my decision. CBS wanted it to go on. But I could see television changing; I could see the tastes were changing.”

“I just made the decision that I was going to try comedy, and if didn't work, then I knew it didn't work. Then I would go back and do whatever. But at least I wouldn't torture myself the rest...”