Citations

Life is made up of small pleasures. Happiness is made up of these tiny successes. And big ones come too infrequently. And if you don' t collect all those tiny successes, the big ones don't really mean anything.

[ on being 90 years old] Suddenly I walk into a room, they're ready to applaud. I'm told how great I look all the time, and they don't mean beautiful. They mean, You're alive.

The best gift I've ever gotten, I've gotten every day of my life, and that's waking up. I love waking up. I'm a morning afternoon and evening person. There are two small words that are the most important words in the English language: 'over' and 'next'.

[on "joyful stress" while making shows] We had the joy of doing something we cared about; the joy of seeing it score and hearing people laugh.

I think I learned early that it's hard to be a human being. I don't care what the circumstances of one's birth, it's hard. If life hasn't made mischief for us, we'll make it for ourselves. But that's the game of life.

[on the significance of his hat] The significance is not the same as how it started. The significance is over time. It just became, "Where's your hat?" If I went somewhere without it, people would ask me, "Hey, wait a minute, where is the hat?" So it became significant.

There wasn't anything-whether dealing with menopause or the economy or bigotry or the language Archie used-it wasn't anything that wasn't familiar to us, as we lived. Nothing that you wouldn't hear in a schoolyard. It was the stuff of life we were living.

[When told he changed society] No, we reflected society. We didn't change it.

There was a time when I suggested that no show should last more than five years. That is sufficient success, and then you make room for new ideas and new talents.