“Adolescence is just one big walking pimple.”

“Because nobody goes through life without a scar.”

“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.”

“Comedy is tragedy - plus time.”

“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.”

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

“I don't have false teeth. Do you think I'd buy teeth like these?”

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

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

“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 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.”

“I'm glad I was born when I was. My time was the golden age of variety. If I were starting out again now, maybe things would happen for me, but it certainly would not be on a variety show with 28 musicians, 12 dancers, two major guest stars, 50 costumes a week by Bob Mackie. The networks just wouldn't spend the money today.”

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

“I'm really not that funny in real life! But I am the best audience one could find. I love to laugh.”

“It's almost impossible to be funnier than the people in Washington.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“We don't stop going to school when we graduate.”

“Well, I don't know how astute I am, but I did want to be a journalist when I was growing up.”

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

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

“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.”

“You know, one wonderful thing that came out of my Enquirer experience is that, in my case, it was ruled tabloids are magazines. Which means they didn't have the protection that a newspaper has.”