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

Censorship feeds the dirty mind more than the four-letter word itself. — Dick Cavett

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

Depression - it falls into that small category of things like combat that, if you haven't been in it, you can say you can imagine it all you like. But it's truly different. — Dick Cavett

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

There were several things a Yale freshman was supposed to be able to do. You had to demonstrate in the Olympic-size Yale pool that you could swim 50 yards or be inducted into swimming class. — 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

It's not always easy to identify your own voice. It comes with time. — Dick Cavett

I get a kick out of people saying I was funny. — 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

Show people tend to treat their finances like their dentistry. They assume the man handling it knows what he is doing. — 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Every time someone says, 'You know, we really ought to get together,' if I were really honest, I would ask 'Why?' — 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 was a big fan of how Johnny Carson hosted awards shows. Dick Cavett, as well, I think did a really great job of providing a nice blend of comedy, wit and class. — Neil Patrick Harris

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

That vervey spontaneity became encounter theater therapy under the direction of the Marquis de Paar, who was peerless at grittily vapid chatter, misty bathos, and scenery-chewing controversy. Dick Cavett, who wrote for Paar, said that working for him was like having an alcoholic in the family. — James Wolcott

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

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

You have to be on TV a surprisingly long time before you're stopped on the street. Then, when you are, you get a lot of, 'Hey, you're great! What's your name again?' — Dick Cavett

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

Do freshman philosophy classes nowadays debate updated versions of the age-old questions? Like, how could a merciful God allow AIDS, childhood cancers, tsunamis and Dick Cheney? — 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 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

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 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

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

It's no fun being a specimen. — Dick Cavett

It's a tribute to the human brain that anyone is able to function out there on television in a talk situation that is entirely artificial. — Dick Cavett

You would have to be naive to think you can appear on television and not have the material edited in some way. — Dick Cavett

I did standup while still working for Johnny Carson in the mid-'60s, thus gaining the advantage of at least getting laughs from him about how I hadn't the night before. — Dick Cavett

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

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 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

Radio, which was a much better medium than television will ever be, was easy and pleasant to listen to. Your mind filled automatically with images. — Dick Cavett

The sudden death at 51 of James Gandolfini is intolerable. — Dick Cavett

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

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

Every student of comedy should see Dame Edna at least twice. — 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

Great humorists are great insulters. — 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 feel like I've been watching Irwin Corey forever. I saw him in the 1950s, and I thought he was old then. — 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

Character is the ability to carry out a good resolution long after the excitement of the moment has passed. — Cavett Robert

If you don't think every day is a good day, just try missing one. — Cavett Robert

I know what it feels like to be a gun lover. — 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

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

You can, after all, reduce the reasons for watching TV to but two: to be lulled, and to be stimulated. Some people do one sometimes, the other sometimes. Some people do all of one or all of the other. — Dick Cavett

Perhaps the saddest irony of depression is that suicide happens when the patient gets a little better and can again function sufficiently. — 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'm not all that enthralled by show business, and I'm not that much of a highbrow. — Dick Cavett

I haven't ever found any great writing on that wonderful and often unappreciated art form, the insult. — Dick Cavett

I always wanted to live in a haunted house. — 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

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

It's lamented that the youth get their news from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. It's lamentable that they get more from them than from the news. — 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

An effective speaker can do more damage or more good in a well-stated minute than an angry klutz could do in half an hour. — 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 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 never been converted to or even had much interest in spiritualism, occultism, Swedenborgianism or any particular religion. And I never, except occasionally for a laugh, visit the quacks who call themselves psychics. — 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