Quotes from Charles Grodin

With me, personal relationships are like my religion. I care that deeply about them. I am the complete opposite of a manipulative smoothie.

I enjoy comedic things. People don't understand it's the hardest thing to do. We have a ratio of 25-to-1 between good dramatic actors and people who are considered good comic actors.

I never mean to be disrespectful, and I don't mean to be a wise guy.

I don't accept what people say. I took something to be copied recently, to be enlarged and blown up, and they said it couldn't be done, and I went somewhere five minutes away, and they did it.

Everyone is having a harder time than it appears.

I don't want to have anything to do with the government. And yet if we don't have any regulations, there goes civilization, there goes security, and there goes protecting you against what people are going to sell you.

I would rather people take me as straightforward and not have to wonder if I'm kidding or not. Because what I have to say, and what I'm interested in doing and communicating, is worthwhile enough that I don't want to muck it up with people being confused about where I'm really coming from.

Good acting is thinking in front of the camera. I just do that and apply a sense of humor to it. You have to trust the audience to get it.

Tom doesn't have any principles, or if he does, he puts them aside whenever they're inconvenient. The truth hurts, doesn't it, Tom?

I do everything from home. I broadcast commentaries for CBS News Radio every day - from home, on a disk that I mail in. I write a weekly op-ed piece for the 'New York Daily News,' and any books or plays or movies that I'm crazy enough to write, I do that from home.

I don't miss acting. I don't even see movies. I don't see plays. I don't watch television.

Everyone is having a harder time than it appears.

I started in movies in 1963, and the first big one was 'Rosemary's Baby' in 1967. While you don't notice it right away, it finally dawns on you that 80% of the time, you're doing nothing.

It seems there are no rich on death row.

It was from an old friend who ¦ thought he was dying. Anyway, he said, Life and death issues don't come along that often, thank God, so don't treat everything like it's life or death. Go easier.