Quote collection
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"I was very interested in vaudeville. It was the only sort of discipline that was a five-minute act on stage, which is what I really enjoyed and saw myself doing. And I bought books on it."
"I'm always looking for something to engage my imagination and take me on a little mental voyage. I just want a new topic in my life."
"I feel good about being able to take bluegrass on to television like 'Letterman' and 'The View,' and I've heard nice things about being able to do that. I really haven't felt any negativity toward me or my music."
"The real joy is in constructing a sentence. But I see myself as an actor first because writing is what you do when you are ready and acting is what you do when someone else is ready."
"I realized that comedians of the day were operating on jokes and punch lines. The moment you say the punch line, the audience either laughs sincerely or they laugh automatically or they don't laugh. The thing that bothered me was that automatic laugh. I said, that's not real laughter."
"I would get records by Earl Scruggs... I would tune my banjo down and I'd pick out the songs note by note. Learned how to play that way. I persevered. There was a book written by Pete Seeger, who showed you some basic strumming and some basic picking... And I kind of worked out my own style of playing."
"I just wanted to be in show business. I didn't care if I was going to be an actor or a magician or what. Comedy was a point of the least resistance, really. And on the simplest level, I loved comedy."
"Comedy may be big business but it isn't pretty."
"I think there are people out there writing original bluegrass songs, but it's hard to get them out on the air."
"When I first started doing my comedy act, I just desperately needed material. So I took literally everything I knew how to do on stage with me, which was juggling, magic and banjo and my little comedy routines. I always felt the audience sorta tolerated the serious musical parts while I was doing my comedy."
"Only then does he realize what he has done to Mirabelle, how wanting a square inch of her and not all of her has damaged them both, and how he cannot justify his actions except that, well, it was life."
"I can juggle. I started juggling as a kid. And when I worked at Disneyland, I knew a juggler there named Christopher Faire, and he taught me how to juggle. I used it in my comedy act for a while."
"To be with another woman, that is French. To be caught, that is American."
"I'm tired of wasting letters when punctuation will do, period."
"Now let's repeat the non-conformists' oath: I promise to be different! I promise to be unique! I promise not to repeat things other people say! Good!"
"I believe you should place a woman on a pedestal: high enough so you can look up her dress."
"[her] mind blackens. The blackness is not a thought, but if it could be pressed into a thought, if a chemical from a dropper could be dripped onto it causing its color and essence to become visible, it would take the shape of this sentence: Why does no one want me?"
"A friend of mine once asked how to make it in show business and I said "Be so good that they can't ignore you." She thought I was being flip but it's true. The challenge is trying to live up to the opportunities given me."
"I just believe that the interesting time in a career is pre-success, what shaped things, how did you get to this point."
"I don't really manage my time. I really just wait until I'm inspired to do something. And when I'm inspired to do something, it just happens."