Carol Burnett Quotations

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

Because nobody goes through life without a scar.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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'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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

In '57, I got a job at the Blue Angel nightclub, and a gentleman named Ken Welch wrote all my material for me. I lived at a place called the Rehearsal Club that was actually the basis for a play called Stage Door.

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.

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.

I had a good loud voice and I wasn't afraid to be goofy or zany.

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

My interesting diet tips are eat early and don't nosh between meals. I mean, I can pack it away.

I liked myself better when I wasnt me.

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

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 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.

My favorite is doing the television show, as a variety show, every week. If the show wasn't that great one week, we could always come back and apologize, you know?

Originally, I came from Texas, and we lived on - I guess you'd call it welfare, what we called relief.

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

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

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

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.

When someone who is known for being comedic does something straight, it's always "a big breakthrough" or a "radical departure." Why is is no one ever says that if a straight actor does comedy? Are they presuming comedy is easier?

I have a great memory.

Comedy = tragedy + time.

The first time someone said, 'What are your measurements?' I answered, '37, 24, 38 - but not necessarily in that order.'

I always felt that I was more of an actress than a - I can't tell a joke to save my soul, but that I was a comedic actress.

I always preferred working with somebody so I could look into their eyeballs and play tennis.

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

What I do when I write is I just write the way I would tell it, so it comes out just exactly the way I would talk to you.

Adolescence is just one big walking pimple.

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.

I always had a weak chin because we couldn't afford to correct my bite, which could have been corrected with braces. So the chin was always weak. And I always was - kind of hated my profile. And I thought wouldn't it be nice someday to feel the rain on your chin without having to look up.

No matter what, when you major in theater arts whether you want to write or be a director or design scenery or whatever, when you are a freshman at UCLA then - I guess it's still the same way - you had to take an acting class.

Daddy, when he drank, just became sweeter. There wasn't a mean thought in his body. I've always said he was like a drunk Jimmy Stewart.

Have you noticed that all you need to grow healthy, vigorous grass is a crack in your sidewalk? Having a baby is like taking your lower lip and forcing it over your head.

If you see a kid in school, who is a little shy ... that's when you should reach out. When you do, you are going to open up a flower and discover something wonderful.

I don't remember a time when I wasn't waiting for a scab either to grow or to fall off my knee.

I couldn't get the laughter out of my head. It wasn't career. It wasn't even a choice. It was a calling.

I have always grown from my problems and challenges, from the things that don't work out, that's when I've really learned.

there were times when I was more at home in front of millions of people than I was at home.

The audience is never wrong.

People invite me to dinner not because I can cook, but because I like to clean up. I get immediate gratification from windex. Yes, I do windows.

Comedy is tragedy plus time.

I think we're here for each other.

If you want to know the feeling [of labor pain], just take your bottom lip and pull it over your head.

If someone tells you that you cannot do something and you believe it, they are right.

You do have to love your kids enough to let them hate you. But it's the disease that's hating you, not them.

No one ever said life was fair. Just Eventful.

You have to have faith that there is a reason you go through certain things. I can't say I'm glad to go through pain, but in a way one must, in order to gain courage and really feel joy.

Before you go to bed, write down three 'gratefuls' for the day and three 'did wells' (they can even include something as simple as doing the laundry)-the results can be amazing!

She was a mountain girl, ... We brought some of her ashes here and placed them next to F.C. Jones. I know she is here tonight because she loved bluegrass.

She suffered. She suffered a whole lot. And at one point I was praying for her to be released. You know, it's just too much.

She said, 'Mama, if I can take it back ...,

People invite me to dinner not because I cook, but because I like to clean up. I get immediate gratification from Windex. Yes, I do windows.

I'm so happy that we can share the many years of music and sketches from our shows with the students of UCLA and people interested in the entertainment industry,

When someone who is known for being comedic does something straight, it' s always "a big breakthrough" or a "radical departure." Why is it no one ever says that if a straight actor does comedy? Are they presuming comedy is easier?

I very much enjoyed doing 'Law & Order,' playing a killer - that was fun, and they had a family feel around the set, so it was a happy show to do even though the subject matter was quite the opposite.

This is to explain just how your mom turned out to be the kind of hairpin she is.

The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia.

It will be fun. I just think it's so campy.

This has been one of the best times of my life, to meet you and spend time in the town my grandmother told me so much about,

The interviewer asked who he would like to be a guest and he said my name, which was very sweet.