Quotes from Jerry Lewis

Getting attention is my business. My whole life's predicated on, 'Hey, look at me!'

You would not believe some of the scripts I have seen. I have read something like 160 that I've rejected, and I keep them all, for posterity.

What's happened at 85 is I've lost my appetite. I used to be a little hog when I was young. But now I really don't seem to need it.

When I'm working, I stay in ICU in any hospital that will get me a bed.

When I hit around 65, 66, I started to feel tremendous worth and incredible personal esteem. I was becoming very cognisant of my contribution to the American spirit of helping your fellow man and all of the good stuff.

To ask a pratfall comedian, a dishes-in-the-face comic like me, to lay back and bring none of that stuff to the script because it doesn't call for it? That's tough.

I really am opinionated, but not for long. I have found myself coming off of what I think of something because the guy I'm talking to makes better sense than I am. I have so many points of view, I can't keep track of 'em, because I talk to too many people... I'm not so opinionated that I won't budge.

I almost resent being Charley Moviestar. Yeah, I'm grateful. But it takes me away from my kids.

For a comic to put a public performance in jeopardy for a snickering little laugh - no, no, no, I don't believe in it.

The young man who's had the Guggenheim fortune behind him all his life - he can hire all the authorities on the subject to teach him how to do a monologue, but he's never going to have the right stuff to pull it off. If he doesn't walk out onstage needing to walk out there, he doesn't have a dream of doing well.

When you get a question like, 'Did you like meeting Her Majesty?' 'No, I thought she was a slob.' I mean, what are you going to say... The mischief comes into me when I'm doing a Q&A, I'm 9 years old again. I don't get mad. I do get offended.

I am probably the most selfish man you will ever meet in your life. No one gets the satisfaction or the joy that I get out of seeing kids realize there is hope.

I tell young comics, 'Do you want this badly enough? It's there. But you have to go get it. And if you think I'm going to give you the key to the lock of that door, there is no key, there is no lock, and there is no door.'

The film I did with Bobby De Niro, 'The King of Comedy' - an awful lot came to me out of that movie because De Niro never allowed me any room to be crazy. If I had tried to play it the way I would normally play it and get hysterical, Bobby would punch me.

You want to know why Barbra Streisand is so difficult? Because she's brilliant. She's a brilliant entertainer, she's a brilliant lady, and she's a wonderful human being, and the community doesn't like it.

Turning 90 is not for sissies.

I'm sour at times.

When I would be myself, I was being big-headed. I was being egotistical. I was a megalomaniac, when it really was just having not to be a monkey for a few hours a day. And fulfilling the need to be a man.

Marilyn Monroe was a fabulous dame - fabulous.

When I get an idea, I start to write like I was electrically motivated.

Commercial television has underestimated the intelligence of the public.

We're leaving the House to people who either were born with a silver spoon in their mouth... or couldn't get better jobs in the first place.

My God, the stage is the only place I know where to go.

I never stop working.