"Now. Now is the most important time
of all of your young lives. And what does now stand for -- N-O-W?
No Other Way. That's the only time -- NOW!"
"I belong to the public. The public
made me. The public can break me. I owe them my life."
"There were times when I was broke, when
I was down in Florida and I had to go to cocktail parties for 500 bucks
-- to see the guy that used to be in pictures. I'm not ashamed of
that. I've never done anything that I was ashamed of. I've
done a lot of things I didn't mean to do."
"... children -- not kids. Kids are
goats. I've always spoken of my children as children."
"I hear Jerry Falwell every Sunday here talking
about the devil and Hollywood ... I'm gonna write him a letter. Hollywood
wasn't built on filth and dirt -- it was built on talent."
"Life is an infiltration course.
We all try and get through it. We all try and get through it unscathed
-- maybe not hurt, not bruised. No bones broken, maybe a few hearts
here and there."
"Age is only experience, and some of us are
more experienced than others."
On Hollywood turning
its back on him:
"I wasn't in the club. You see, I'm
not going to be a stroker. I never have been all my life."
The Big Bear Story
"I broke my leg after doing ‘A Midsummer's Night Dream' -- the first four days -- at Big Bear in a toboggan accident where I was almost killed. I was in the front of the toboggan with three big guys in back of me with a lot of inertia of the heavy weight, and my foot slipped off the toboggan, went right in the snow and split me up the middle. If it hadn't broken -- my femur -- at the exact time, I would have been killed.
... While I was recuperating there (Hollywood
Presbyterian Hospital) to get back on the set of ‘A Midsummer's Night Dream'
-- they were waiting for me -- where I did that entire picture in a plaster
of Paris cast covered up by Olivia De Havilland's dress ... while
I'm at the Presbyterian Hospital and I'm recuperating, my wife (Jan) is
born on the 6th floor. Now that's a billion-to-one shot."