Quotes from Jerry Lewis

When you're 89, dementia develops. I mean, I've told a story onstage, and I'm telling it with a full heart, and I forgot the damn punch line.

I have some very personal feelings about politics, but I don't get into it because I do comedy already.

I got the 'Max Rose' script, and I fell in love with it. It just hit me. It was something that needed to be made.

I'm always thinking about future projects and at the same time trying to finish the project you're in the middle off.

I have a loyalty that runs in my bloodstream, when I lock into someone or something, you can't get me away from it because I commit that thoroughly. That's in friendship, that's a deal, that's a commitment. Don't give me paper - I can get the same lawyer who drew it up to break it. But if you shake my hand, that's for life.

A lot of people resent that I've been in someone's life for 50 years. Why shouldn't people have an affection for me and what I've done? Didn't I have to be genuine for them to buy into what I did? There are children who grow up today who will not have that when they're 55 years old. With whom will they have it? Name an example for me.

I'm really not thick-skinned - my wife will tell you that I take sunsets personally - but I know that I've got the belly for whatever comes down the pike. I think it's tenacity. You've been there before, and you just have to recall, 'How did I handle that one?'

Being 90 is not simple, but it's interesting, very interesting. Before I was 90, I could walk, I could see well, I could hear terrific, and now, I can't hear or see or walk.

I get paid for what most kids get punished for.

It'll keep you alive for another 10 years if you get yourself a laugh once a day: either provoke it, or look around in the wildest laboratory in the world, the public.

Gambling is part of the human condition. I love it. I have the best time gambling. I've been winning fortunes, and I've been losing them.

I think the cartoons that they're children are watching, particularly 'The Simpsons,' they're OK. I think that the adult audience is making much too much of the danger that they imply. That's not the case. The danger for children today, honey, is the news. Keep them away from news on television.

I've had great success being a total idiot.

People think I'm against critics because they are negative to my work. That's not what bothers me. What bothers me is they didn't see the work. I have seen critics print stuff about stuff I cut out of the film before we ran it. So don't tell me about critics.

You think about getting old, but when you get there, it's not what you thought it would be.

The greatest thing I can remember in my whole career was the Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey clowns asking me to appear with them at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles in 1965.

Adrenaline is wonderful. It covers pain. It covers dementia. It covers everything.

A wonderful thing happens over time. You fall in love with the sound of your own voice.

Billy Crystal, Steve Martin do wonderful things.

From 1936 on, I have taken more falls than any other 20 comedians put together. From the time I was 21, I've taken them on everything from clay courts to cement to wood floors, coming off pianos, going out a two-story window, landing on Dean, falling into the rough. You do that and you're gonna have problems.

I don't want to be remembered. I want the nice words when I can hear them.

The connection between pathos and broad comedy is very tight. But you do far more work in a comedy scene than you do in a straight scene. It's much harder.

I like to watch all those shows that shouldn't be on the air - reality shows.

God hadn't made me handsome, but he'd given me something, I always felt: funny bones.