Dick Cavett Quotes & Sayings

I'm not sure why writing for others became harder. Probably a reluctance to give away anything you might conceivably use yourself caused a block. I did it, but it remained hard when it had once been easy. — Dick Cavett

Every so often, there is an article saying the old kind of talk show isn't possible now. In the oldest kind of talk show, you only had the choice of that or two other channels! — Dick Cavett

I'm not freakishly short. I had, on my show, used shortness as a joke subject; it didn't really bother me. — Dick Cavett

It takes a certain amount of guts to go to your class reunions. — Dick Cavett

If your parents never had children, chances are you won't either. — Dick Cavett

There is something about a Luger that separates it from all other handguns, and Luger devotees and Luger society members speak of it in romantic terms that must sound plain nuts to those who consider themselves level-headed. — Dick Cavett

The idea that hunting is one against one is ludicrous. It's one animal versus the hunter, the manufacturer of the rifle, the bullet maker, the designer and manufacturer of the telescopic sight, the auto manufacturer who made the car the hunter got to the edge of the wild in, the maker of his waterproof shoes, the various manufacturers of his mittens, glasses, overcoat
and that's only the beginning of the list. The "sportsman" who shoots an animal should then make a speech, like the actor who wins an Oscar does, thanking the multitudes behind the scenes who made this "victory" possible. — Dick Cavett

I think I'd be pretty easy to write for. — Dick Cavett

Why are people afraid of ghosts? 'Ooh, no, I wouldn't want to see one! I'd be too scared' - accompanied by a tremolo of fear in the voice - is the common reaction. This puzzles me. I'd think anyone would welcome he opportunity. I've never heard of a ghost hurting anybody. — Dick Cavett

I don't see the future as bright, language-wise. I see it as a glass half empty - and evaporating quickly. — Dick Cavett

In the main, ghosts are said to be forlorn and generally miserable, if not downright depressed. The jolly ghost is rare. — Dick Cavett

Comedians are sometimes resentful of their writers. Probably because it's hard for giant egos to admit you need anyone but yourself to be what you are. — Dick Cavett

Commercials are not the only exposure that obesity gets on TV. It is by no means a rarity on the wonderful Judge Judy's show when both plaintiff and accused all but literally fill the screen. — Dick Cavett

Unpleasant reading on the subject of anger tells us that there's not really anything wrong with it. In limited amounts. It can even be a good thing. A pressure valve. — Dick Cavett

Lawyers work hard and, like us, they're human, many of them. — Dick Cavett

The authority of depression is horrifying. I felt like my brain was busted and that I could never feel good again. I really thought that I was never gonna heal. — Dick Cavett

The information superhighway? That sounds like a place that's long and boring and kills 50,000 people a year. — Dick Cavett

It was well after college that I learned about depression. I got my first job for Jack Paar. I realized I was sleeping 14 hours a day and just living for the Paar show. — Dick Cavett

Why anyone, by dying, should thereby be declared beyond criticism, innocent of wrongdoing, suddenly filled with virtue and above reproach escapes me. — Dick Cavett

The emotions in all true anxiety dreams are next to unbearable. — Dick Cavett

It's fun for me to go on other folks' talk shows. When you've endured the ups and downs and tensions and pitfalls of hosting, being a guest is a piece of angel food. — Dick Cavett

Greatly talented performers don't know - often spectacularly - what's best for them, don't know what their talents really are, and don't know what's just plain wrong for them. — Dick Cavett

Statistically, I'd say comedy writers are perhaps the sanest category of show people. And why not? They make big money, and although it's not an easy trade - particularly when you're at your galley oar five days a week - it's easier on the nerves and the psyche than living with the brain-squeezing pressure and cares of being the Star. — Dick Cavett

The Nixon administration kept a nasty eye on our show ... Cops would come by - often just in time to see the act they wanted to see. — Dick Cavett

Once I left out what I then considered my best line because there was a suspected column rat in the house. — Dick Cavett

A conversation does not have to be scintillating in order to be memorable. I once met a president of the United States, and his second sentence to me was about knees. — Dick Cavett

The brain process that results in a joke materializing where no joke was before remains a mystery. I'm not aware of any scholarly, scientific or neurological studies on the subject. — Dick Cavett

Electronic devices dislike me. There is never a day when something isn't ailing. — Dick Cavett

Running my show is really like an actor being in repertory but where, in one day in one performance, you do scenes from a drama, a farce, a low comedy and a tragedy. — Dick Cavett

It was at a vividly bad time in Norman Mailer's life that I met him, and a sort of water-treading time in mine. He had stabbed his wife, and I was a copy boy at Time magazine. — Dick Cavett

I felt bad when George Bush was booed. But only briefly. My sympathy for that man has a half-life of about four seconds. — Dick Cavett

Being the offspring of English teachers is a mixed blessing. When the film star says to you, on the air, 'It was a perfect script for she and I,' inside your head you hear, in the sarcastic voice of your late father, 'Perfect for she, eh? And perfect for I, also?' — Dick Cavett

I had to fight the intellectual label when I started in television, because, first of all, it's not going to help you commercially, and also, it wasn't particularly true of me. I mean, if anybody thought I was an intellectual, they probably had never really seen one. — Dick Cavett

I'm sure I've all but lost friends by maintaining that, despite their love for it, I always saw Stanley Kramer's 'It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World' as more of an exercise in anti-comedy than humor. — Dick Cavett

I've actually gotten so I don't associate television with entertainment very much. — Dick Cavett

There's so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets? — Dick Cavett

To call New York's traffic at holiday time a nightmare is to understate. — Dick Cavett

Years have passed since I have set foot in a comedy club. If the comic is doing badly it's painful, and if the comic is doing brilliantly, it's extremely painful. — Dick Cavett

I have a long list of things that make me mad. — Dick Cavett

Every writer knows that unless you were born gifted with either supreme confidence or outsize ego, handing in your work holds, in some cases, admitted terror. If that's too strong, at least fairly high anxiety. — Dick Cavett

If (O.J. Simpson) is acquitted, I will renounce my citizenship. And if I converse with him at a cocktail party, I will say, 'Well, there are so many people here who haven't murdered anyone. I think I'll go talk to them.' I'll also riot. — Dick Cavett

Anyone working in the media can tell you that there seems to be an always-ready-to-explode segment of the populace for whom offense is a fate worse than anything imaginable. You'd think offense is one of the most calamitous things that could happen to a human being; right up there with the loss of a limb, or just missing a parking space. — Dick Cavett

I think we live in an age of increasing mediocrity. — Dick Cavett

I love my own coincidences and love to hear other peoples' stories. — Dick Cavett

I'm the only talk show host, I think, if there's such a category in, what's called, the book of records, to have a guest die while we were taping the show, yeah. — Dick Cavett

I feel sorry for the poor kids whose parents feel they're qualified to teach them at home. Of course, some parents are smarter than some teachers, but in the main I see home-schooling as misguided foolishness. — Dick Cavett

I don't think anyone ever gets over the surprise of how differently one audience's reaction is from another. — Dick Cavett

Chris Matthews can't start any sentence without 'Let me ask you this ... ' And I love Chris Matthews! But almost everybody in journalism does it. Who's stopping you? Just say it! — Dick Cavett

There should be three days a week when no one is allowed to say: 'What's your sign?' Violators would have their copies of Kahlil Gibran confiscated. — Dick Cavett

Can you picture yourself at the age 60 doing what you do now? — Dick Cavett

I guess the best advice I ever got or anyone could get for doing a talk show, though it has not been easy very often, was from Jack Paar, who said, 'Kid, don't make it an interview. Interviews have clipboards, and you're like David Frost. Make it a conversation.' — Dick Cavett

I don't feel old. I feel like a young man that has something wrong with him. — Dick Cavett

I eat at this German-Chinese restaurant and the food is delicious. The only problem is that an hour later you're hungry for power. — Dick Cavett

I'll be happy if I can just stay out of Nebraska. — Dick Cavett

The trick to writing for people is, you have to be able to turn them on in your head. And know how they'd word something or how they'd inflect it. — Dick Cavett

When I'm doing an appearance somewhere and taking questions from the audience, I can always count on: 'Tell about the guy who died on your show!' — Dick Cavett

I confess, I do have to remind myself almost daily that there are people on this earth capable of reading, writing, eating and dressing themselves who believe their lives are ruled from billions of miles away, by the stars - and, of course, the planets. — Dick Cavett

Music bypasses the brain and goes straight to the heart. I wish my life had more of it. — Dick Cavett

Meryl Streep belongs on anybody's list of greats. — Dick Cavett

The very phrase 'Oscar night' used to accelerate my pulse. For one thing - dating myself - it meant Bob Hope. He always had good, strong jokes, that faultless delivery, and always a new joke about his own films' failure - once again - to be honored. — Dick Cavett

A biggest mistake I made when I started doing a talk show was I thought you had to read the books. — Dick Cavett

As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it.
— Dick Cavett

I live a sensible life. You know, I don't take on too much. — Dick Cavett

Coming up through the ranks of any calling can be rough, but that battered soul who survives the early years of courting the comic muse comes close to knowing what only the soldier knows: What combat is like. — Dick Cavett

Therapists need to give a depressed patient support and direction. — Dick Cavett

Teaching is an art and a profession requiring years of training. — Dick Cavett

Every time I nostalgically try to regain my liking of John McCain, he reaches into his sleaze bag and pulls out something malodorous. — Dick Cavett

I feel like I've been watching Irwin Corey forever. I saw him in the 1950s, and I thought he was old then. — Dick Cavett

Obviously those who burn to be professional jesters mean that they want to be successful comedians. And those are always an elite, microscopic portion of the population. But oh, how they try. — Dick Cavett

Anything seen on TV is, in a subtle and sinister sense, thereby endorsed. — Dick Cavett

I think I have many spenglerian moods about the country, and that some day people will look back and think 'this was a really goofy, unadmirable stupid time. — Dick Cavett

I always wanted to live in a haunted house. — Dick Cavett

If you have a relative who's lost interest in everything and doesn't get out of bed, who doesn't care for things they used to, can't imagine anything that would give them any pleasure, don't fool around with it; get therapy, get help, get medication if that's right for you, or talk therapy, or something. — Dick Cavett

The mob became unruly and the police were forced to resort to sex. — Dick Cavett

William F. Buckley was a man who had a great capacity for fun and for amusing himself by amazing others. — Dick Cavett

If I were running a campaign, I'd urge taking the mountain of money reportedly squandered on pizza, coffee and bagels and spending it more wisely - on a talented young comedy writer. — Dick Cavett

The greatest benefit of depression is the fact that when I have talked about it, every so often someone comes up and says, 'You saved my dad's life.' — Dick Cavett

Just think of all the billions of coincidences that don't happen. — Dick Cavett

While other kids were out playing and doing healthy things, I read an ancient judo book with a neck hold that was fatal to so many people, they finally dropped it from judo. — Dick Cavett

A grown man, weeping, is a tough thing to see. — Dick Cavett

When I was a kid in Nebraska, a cantankerous farmer, known for plinking with his '22 at passing cars in which he perceived enemies, ingeniously rigged up a shotgun in his house, trained on the inside of his front door so as to widely distribute any intruder. — Dick Cavett

I have a disturbing problem with losing things. My vulnerability to loss-distress could properly be labeled not only inordinate, but neurotic. — Dick Cavett

To label me an intellectual is a misunderstanding of what that is. — Dick Cavett

My IQ is somewhere between Spiro Agnew's and Albert Einstein's. — Dick Cavett

Sloppy language leads to sloppy thought, and sloppy thought to sloppy legislation. — Dick Cavett

I have yet to see one of those Comedy Central shows with multiple standup comics that doesn't include someone the size of the Hindenburg. — Dick Cavett

Does anything show the complexity of the miraculous brain more than that weird curiosity, the sleep-protection dream? — Dick Cavett

Home schooling as an idea is on a par with home dentistry. — Dick Cavett

I'm not all that enthralled by show business, and I'm not that much of a highbrow. — Dick Cavett

By the time I was in the fourth grade, I sounded exactly like my father on the phone. — Dick Cavett

My dream was maybe someday, one night I can be a guest on a talk show, and then I will have achieved everything I want. — Dick Cavett

There are online forms you can fill out to send to your lawmakers, demanding that nothing - nothing at all or in any way - be done about any guns whatever, anywhere. — Dick Cavett

In relative youth, we assume we'll remember everything. Someone should urge the young to think otherwise. — Dick Cavett

I hate Danny Kaye movies. — Dick Cavett

History is not reassuring on the subject of the longevity of seemingly lasting great nations, is it? — Dick Cavett

Japanese is sort of a hobby of mine, and I can get around Japan with ease. — Dick Cavett

I have a feeling that about 90% of my life has been shaped by my voice, both as an embarrassment and as an advantage. There was always the terrible incongruity of this deep voice barreling out of this little body. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was aware that it was ludicrous, that it took on an importance that wasn't really there. — Dick Cavett

I am always shocked that there are still a handful of defenders of the dubious practice of abstinence, surely the worst idea since chocolate-covered ants. — Dick Cavett

I like when the ice gets thin, the going gets rough, the guests get edgy. — Dick Cavett

I'm not the guy with the enormous comedy nose or the big feet or the bad posture or the whatever; a physical comic has certain things. — Dick Cavett