Carvey Quotes & Sayings

I had great affection for Dana Carvey, and I think we all thought, "Dana's the guy. There's the comic genius." — Kurt Fuller

I think free speech is probably the coolest thing we have in this country, and again, you can label it hate speech and dismiss it, and then you're allowed to censor it. — Dana Carvey

I have no regrets. I wanted to raise the kids and be a present father. When I developed a movie, I was gone for a year. That didn't really work for me. That isn't fair to make these life-forms and then disappear. — Dana Carvey

I have a theory that if you're famous more years than you're not famous, then you get a little nutty. — Dana Carvey

You know ladies and gentlemen, a long time ago , there were lots of people, but that was a long time ago — Dana Carvey

I'm thirty years old, but I read at the thirty-four-year-old level. — Dana Carvey

Well, I loved variety in television, I loved sketch comedy. At 'Saturday Night Live,' I stayed almost seven years. — Dana Carvey

My Obama is getting pretty good ... I think I'll vote for whoever makes my portrayal easier. It takes time to put together a comic impression. It takes time to recognize the tics. Right now, for instance, I could do a dead- on Paul Ryan and people wouldn't recognize it. Personalities take a while to sin ... — Dana Carvey

If you just kind of live a regular life and make good 'Hollywood' money, you have a certain freedom. — Dana Carvey

Describing comic sensibility is near impossible. It's sort of an abstract silliness, that sometimes the joke isn't the star. — Dana Carvey

I'm a friend of the CEO of Twitter and he showed me how to be on it, but it causes such an uproar if what you post is perceived in a negative light. — Dana Carvey

I think ABC sort of hoped I would be really like Carol Burnett. I mean literally, I think. — Dana Carvey

I did a lot of ridiculous television. Between 1980 and '85 I had no confidence, so I did everything I was told to do. — Dana Carvey

I wanted to be the next Dana Carvey. This was my ultimate goal. If I ever cut into a birthday cake and made a wish, I would wish to be on 'Saturday Night Live.' If I threw a coin into a fountain, I would wish to be on 'Saturday Night Live.' If I saw a shooting star, I would wish to be on 'Saturday Night Live.' — Jimmy Fallon

If I only ran when nothing hurt, I would never run. — Dana Carvey

You know, Elizabeth Taylor must be in Heaven going, 'Alright, fire two honey!' — Dana Carvey

I always tend to think of all of my shows as possibly my last show. I'm like a junior Springsteen, without the underbite. — Dana Carvey

I've never really worked on them. Just once in a while one hits me and makes me laugh. My Al Gore was sort of like a gay Gomer Pyle. — Dana Carvey

I don't find biology as interesting as politics and humanism. I talk more about existential stuff. — Dana Carvey

After years of begging, I got my parents to get me a little Craig tape recorder, a reel to reel. Then I started recording voices, or recording Jonathan Winters off television and stuff like that. — Dana Carvey

I know it's a cliche, but the whole family is just whacked. I mean, we're all out of our minds. They're the funniest, most eccentric bizarre people I've ever met, my siblings. — Dana Carvey

I'm more of a people pleaser. — Dana Carvey

I have this dream life where I get to be a celebrity but I get to navigate the world fairly easily because I'm always in character. — Dana Carvey

While many comics have a secret persona, I fundamentally want to be myself. — Dana Carvey

The two things that can hurt you are if you need money or if you need fame. Those are the things that can be your Achilles heel. But if you don't need money and you don't need fame, then you're free. — Dana Carvey

Am I not turtley enough for the Turtle Club? Turtle! Turtle! — Dana Carvey

I had written in another draft a completely different kind of fight, but they said they couldn't afford to shoot it. They needed a fight scene, though, so I was told to put a fight scene in, but not the one I had written. — Dana Carvey

That's why modern corporate movie making has become so laborious that comedians are kind of kicked out by 50. — Dana Carvey

Me and Conan O'Brien and Robert Smigel and Dana Carvey wrote a script called 'Hans and Franz: The Girlyman Dilemma,' and it was going to be co-produced with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he was going to co-star in it. We had a deal with Sony, we got paid to write it, and it was a musical, but it never got made because ... I think Arnold kind of backed out at the last minute because he was getting cold feet because ;The Last Action Hero' had come out, where he was parodying himself. But it was a really funny script, and I wish it could've seen the light, because I think it would've done really well. — Kevin Nealon

We didn't even think about it, you know? I used to collect laser discs, and you'd have some college professor analyzing It's a Wonderful Life or Citizen Kane, and now it is pretty funny - the idea of commentary for a silly kid's movie, you know? — Dana Carvey

I got lucky. I won the San Francisco Stand-Up Comedy Competition in 1977 while I was still at San Francisco State. — Dana Carvey

I must have been 10 or 11, but anything Dana Carvey ever did, I just really loved. He was on for a long time, I don't really know when that era was. I could watch Dana Carvey with my parents, they loved him too. They loved all his characters. — Mindy Kaling

This movie will actually increase the sex life of parents everywhere because they can put this on, with the 45 minutes of extras and they've got almost two hours to do whatever they've got to do while the kids watch the movie. — Dana Carvey

A mom and dad found an S&M magazine under their 10-year-old son's bed, and the dad said, 'Well, we sure can't spank him.' — Dana Carvey

When you saw Jon Lovitz or Dana Carvey or Phil Hartman doing something, they were acting. It was real acting. Like, they were acting like that person. They weren't like - it wasn't even like they were really trying to go for a laugh, especially in Phil Hartman's case. — Bill Hader

My characters all start with rhythms and sounds. Once I hear the voice and get into the rhythm, the attitude and the physicality just come out on their own. — Dana Carvey

I used to sneak up to the 8th floor and watch Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo rehearsing 'Saturday Night Live' and could only wonder if I would ever have the chance to be funny. It took me five years to go up the two stories, but it is such a sense of fulfillment to be able to show what I can do on national television. — Dana Carvey

I couldn't do any of my other characters, you know? But I could have done the lady. Church Lady's Malibu Beach party is an idea I have for a movie, too. Yes. — Dana Carvey

I recently found out about this other super movie star. He only works from about 11:00 to 4:00, so all his movies take like 120 days. But this was a lot of stuff to do in 35 days. — Dana Carvey

There was an assumption that I was personally attacking Sarah Palin by impersonating her on TV. No one ever said it was 'mean' when Chevy Chase played Gerald Ford falling down all the time. No one ever accused Dana Carvey or Darrell Hammond or Dan Aykroyd of 'going too far' in their political impressions. You see what I'm getting at here. I am not mean and Mrs. Palin is not fragile. To imply otherwise is a disservice to us both. — Tina Fey

I enjoy pushing my characters to the limit. No matter how far out there I go, I look for things that make the characters human. — Dana Carvey

It was scary to be in that world of politics. I felt uncomfortable to be in that discussion. The weird thing is, when Darrell Hammond or Will Ferrell or Dana Carvey did an impersonation of a president, no one assumed it was personal, but because Sarah Palin and I are both women and people think women are meaner to each other, everyone assumed it was personal. — Tina Fey

You know, sometimes you can't just take an armadillo, put it in the barn, light it on fire and expect it to make licorice. — Dana Carvey

I never read the tabloids. — Dana Carvey

I tried to go out for theater or theater arts, but I was too scared or too intimidated. But I had a lot of friends on the cross country team that had great senses of humor. — Dana Carvey

I really enjoy being a dad, and maybe I took it too seriously, but I love being around my kids. — Dana Carvey

I'm a real people-pleaser. — Dana Carvey

I had auditioned for 'Saturday Night Live' two or three times before and never really saw myself there. I looked up to Belushi and Bill Murray and Aykroyd and I never saw myself as in their world. — Dana Carvey

It's almost like he's started to sound even more exotic the more people started doing him. I don't know why, but there's just something about Al Gore that makes me laugh. — Dana Carvey

When people come to see my stand-up, they get a chance to see my characters interact with each other. — Dana Carvey