Don Rickles Quotes

Alan King, a comedian I adored, was considered society, and I was considered the Jewish kid from the neighborhood.

You lose your energy, you lose that excitement and it gets the audience up.

It's tough having the last name Rickles. Luckily, my kids handled it great.

Everything I do on stage, I made up in saloons. I started doing it in front of people, and that became my performance. I never had writers.

We show a lot of film [with Regis Philbin] from my career which is most enjoyable. I enjoy watching it.

Frank Sinatra enjoyed my humor, so I could say almost anything to him. I mean, within reason.

I don't really tell a joke per se, I build up an attitude and it becomes a joke.

The thing I love about Vegas is that it's a melting pot. It's like working Ellis Island.

I have my own gym. When you do jokes and they sell, you get a gym.

Everything I've ever done in my whole career, people might not know, I've never written anything down on paper.

You know what's funny to me? Attitude.

When I got out of high school, I wanted to be an actor but was getting a lot of rejections. I was getting rejected by life. My mother, God rest her soul, told me not to quit.

Show business is my life. When I was a kid I sold insurance, but nobody laughed.

I don't really tell a joke, I react to situations. The whole thing is just looking at somebody and showing all our weaknesses and exaggerating them, and that's how it becomes funny.

The man I adored, and miss him terribly, was Johnny Carson.

It's just to break things up between stand-up gigs. I would only do it periodically. Maybe just an East Coast thing.

When I'm onstage, I'm acting.

When I first went to Vegas, there were just high-rollers and gamblers and the wise guys treated you great.

To me, the stand up part in my life is great. I know I can do that. When I get an acting chance, I'm really thrilled.

I don't get into politics. I know [Donald] Trump, but I don't follow that. That's just an aside for him when he has nothing else to say. He never involved me in any of that stuff.

Room service is great if you want to pay $500 for a club sandwich.

I knew most of the people there who ran the places, a lot of wiseguys. They're all gone now. All good people.

I still think funny, and people young and old still come and see me. That's flattering. The day comes that they stop coming, then I'll know that it's time to retire to the Jewish ranch.

I was nice to the people in the Philippines for the two and a half years I was there, because I knew even­tually I'd have to kiss up to them so my grandchildren could have toys.

It takes many years to be a great comedian.

I was always the guy - out of insecurities, I was always making fun, even as a kid.

People think being in your seventies means sitting around in a chair with a blanket over your legs, drooling.

Political correctness? In my humor, I never talk about politics. I was never much into all that.

My whole act is off the top of my head.

I still have drive, but everything is relative.

I've never gambled a dime. Never, in all my years in Vegas.

You've got to be able to sell yourself.

My health, thank God, has kept my brain alive.

My father wasn't much for show business. He was an insurance man - very well-liked, very warm. He had a lot of friends.

Well, I call myself an actor. I always wanted to be one.

The transformation has been unbelievable. When I started here, I worked in a place where the Sky Room was on the second floor.

I'm always watching films. The Academy pretty much sends me every film that's ever been done. I enjoy watching them, especially with the people I know.

Hell, do I remember the first joke? I was never a jokester.

My father when walked into a room, you could tell that everybody loved him. They really did. He was quite a man. My mother was more into the show biz atmosphere than he was.

I don't do impressions.

I've never been mean-spirited, in my opinion. I never did anything below the belt.

I never went out looking for glory.

I was a mother's boy.

I would describe myself as a guy that's very normal but has the tendency to rib people, but never in a mean-spirited way.

I grew up in an Orthodox family, as I grew older, I became Conservative and that's how it ended up. But I've developed that Jewish feel to my act from my surroundings and my family.

You can't study comedy it's within you. It's a personality. My humor is an attitude.

Among my friends, I'm not a little Boy Scout, and they love my humor, thank God.

Most people think the character I do onstage is the way I am offstage, but I'm just a regular guy who spends time with his family and who turns on the television and watches a lot of sports.

I like to think I'm like the guy who goes to the office Christmas party Friday night, insults some people, but still has his job Monday morning.

I stopped smoking. But my personality I still have. I get up in the morning, and not everybody loves me, so if you want to call that a bad habit, there's that.