Jerry Lewis

“I've had great success being a total idiot.”

“When I hit around 65, 66, I started to feel tremendous worth and incredible personal esteem. I was becoming very cognisant of my contribution to the American spirit of helping your fellow ma...”

“I would not want to do one-episode television - that's just a brief encounter with your audience. The arc takes the actor into an arena where he can really stretch.”

“The greatest thing I can remember in my whole career was the Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey clowns asking me to appear with them at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles in 1965.”

“A woman doing comedy doesn't offend me, but sets me back a bit. I, as a viewer, have trouble with it. I think of her as a producing machine that brings babies in the world.”

“You want to know why Barbra Streisand is so difficult? Because she's brilliant. She's a brilliant entertainer, she's a brilliant lady, and she's a wonderful human being, and the community do...”

“This is the pain pacemaker. I've got a battery under my skin. From that battery are two electrodes that go into the spine where they cut bone away to accommodate it. Now I put on the power h...”

“You can't be faulted for being selfish if you're going to get better because of it.”

“I have a loyalty that runs in my bloodstream, when I lock into someone or something, you can't get me away from it because I commit that thoroughly. That's in friendship, that's a deal, that...”

“From 1936 on, I have taken more falls than any other 20 comedians put together. From the time I was 21, I've taken them on everything from clay courts to cement to wood floors, coming off pi...”

“I almost resent being Charley Moviestar. Yeah, I'm grateful. But it takes me away from my kids.”

“Pity? You don't want to be pitied because you're a cripple in a wheelchair? Stay in your house!”

“The film I did with Bobby De Niro, 'The King of Comedy' - an awful lot came to me out of that movie because De Niro never allowed me any room to be crazy. If I had tried to play it the way I...”

“Adrenaline is wonderful. It covers pain. It covers dementia. It covers everything.”

“When you're 89, dementia develops. I mean, I've told a story onstage, and I'm telling it with a full heart, and I forgot the damn punch line.”

“Interviews are vital, but you cannot allow an interviewer to take your life and disturb it.”

“I expect people that come to the studio to work to come with the same energy I come with. If I see less than that, I get very strong about, if you want to do this, come with a sense of pride...”

“When I would be myself, I was being big-headed. I was being egotistical. I was a megalomaniac, when it really was just having not to be a monkey for a few hours a day. And fulfilling the nee...”

“I never got a formal education. So my intellect is my common sense. I don't have anything else going for me. And my common sense opens the door to instinct.”

“Gambling is part of the human condition. I love it. I have the best time gambling. I've been winning fortunes, and I've been losing them.”