Alan King Quotes

My son says I never tell stories about anyone who’s living.

There’s a charm, there’s a rhythm, there’s a soul to Jewish humor. When I first saw Richard Pryor perform, I told him, ‘You’re doing a Jewish act.’

Comedy is a reflection. We create nothing. We set no styles, no standards. We’re reflections. It’s a distorted mirror in the fun house. We watch society. As society behaves, then we have the ability to make fun of it.

If you keep yourself alive and current, funny is funny.

I made it, Ma – Carnegie Hall. And I didn’t have to practice.

I had a sympathetic role in ‘thirtysomething,’ and in two weeks I’m going to do the role again. But in the movies, I just love the heavies. It’s much more fun. Villains are a ball. People have been laughing at me for 50 years, so I love to sit in the back of the theater and listen to them hate me.

Everything my mother made had to cook for 80 hours, and when she made matzoh balls she didn’t know fluffy. Everything sank.

We get the worrywart, the hypochondriac, the money-grubbing miser, the intractable negotiator… Some would say certain of these refer to the stereotypical, or ‘stage’ Jew. But objectively speaking, the only crime in humor is an unfunny joke.

There’s nobody to believe in anymore, nobody to trust.

Did you hear the one about the elderly Jew on his deathbed who sent for a priest, after declaring to his astonished relatives that ‘I want to convert.’ Asked why he would become a Catholic, after living all his life as a Jew, he answered: ‘Better one of them should die than one of us.’

That’s the great thing about New Year’s, you get to be a year older. For me, that wasn’t such a joke, because my birthday was always around this time. When I was a kid, my father used to tell me that everybody was celebrating my birthday. That’s what the trees are all about.

I can’t stay friends with anyone who doesn’t have a passion for something; and, generally speaking, artistic people, creative people carry it right into the kitchen, too. They have a zest for life; the excitement of living. All of the great eaters I’ve known are also men of great wit.

Age, style, where you come from, where you were born, it’s different every time, which, to me, is refreshing because it says that there isn’t any one thing, one formula or kind of character that makes a great comedian. Everybody has had a different approach.

I’m only… I’m only unhappy when the reviews are bad, but give me a good review and I’m a… I’m just screaming all over the place with joy.

You do live longer with bran, but you spend the last fifteen years on the toilet.

When I read Dickens for the first time, I thought he was Jewish, because he wrote about oppression and bigotry, all the things that my father talked about.

My father helped me leave. He said, ‘It’s all out there, it’s not here.’

Banks have a new image. Now you have ‘a friend,’ your friendly banker. If the banks are so friendly, how come they chain down the pens?

The world is full of little dictators trying to run your life.

You know you are getting old when people tell you how good you look.

My mother kept the house clean and we ate good. I didn’t know we were poor until I started giving interviews.

I don’t mind being 65, but nobody is gonna tell me to come in at 5:30 to have the early bird special.

A summary of every Jewish holiday: They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat!

As a parent, I’d – I’d be a better father.

Performing is just standing up there and doing something. Performance takes on an edge to it. It has a more dramatic context.

One thing I’ve never said in my whole life is, ‘Let’s have dinner at a Japanese restaurant.’

My brother is the youngest member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons. And I wouldn’t let him cut my nails.

Marriage is nature’s way of keeping us from fighting with strangers.

And humor has always been a weapon. You want to get even on somebody? You want to attack somebody? Make fun of them.

When I was a kid, I used to send away for those ventriloquist kits on the back of comic books.

I just never saw my mother in any other room but the kitchen. There were always pots going.