Steve Allen

“The hair is real - it's the head that's a fake.”

“Do I ever get questions that are rude or impertinent? Yes, but I love to use them. The audience immediately perceives the emotional awkwardness of the situation.”

“When my mother passed away several years ago—well, wait a minute. Actually, she didn’t ‘pass away.’ She died. Something about that verb, ‘to pass away’ always sounds to me as if someone just drifted through the wallpaper. No, my mother did not pass away. She definitely died.”

“I used to be a heavy gambler. But now I just make mental bets. That's how I lost my mind.”

“Asthma doesn't seem to bother me any more unless I'm around cigars or dogs. The thing that would bother me most would be a dog smoking a cigar.”

“Pretend you're a southern sheriff. Or Mae West. Or Donald Duck. Buy a western hat and walk around the house like a cowboy. The point of all this, of course, is to draw yourself out of your accustomed groove.”

“One of the nice things about problems is that a good many of them do not exist except in our imaginations.”