Dick Cavett

“I get a kick out of people saying I was funny.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I live a sensible life. You know, I don't take on too much.”

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

“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.'”

“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.”

“The emotions in all true anxiety dreams are next to unbearable.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“To label me an intellectual is a misunderstanding of what that is.”

“In relative youth, we assume we'll remember everything. Someone should urge the young to think otherwise.”

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

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

“I don't feel old. I feel like a young man that has something wrong with him.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Show people tend to treat their finances like their dentistry. They assume the people who handle it know what they are doing.”

“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.”