Quotes from Dick Cavett

You have to be on TV a surprisingly long time before you're stopped on the street. Then, when you are, you get a lot of, 'Hey, you're great! What's your name again?'

By the time I was in the fourth grade, I sounded exactly like my father on the phone.

To call New York's traffic at holiday time a nightmare is to understate.

Great humorists are great insulters.

Anyone working in the media can tell you that there seems to be an always-ready-to-explode segment of the populace for whom offense is a fate worse than anything imaginable. You'd think offense is one of the most calamitous things that could happen to a human being; right up there with the loss of a limb, or just missing a parking space.

I am always shocked that there are still a handful of defenders of the dubious practice of abstinence, surely the worst idea since chocolate-covered ants.

I think I have many spenglerian moods about the country, and that some day people will look back and think 'this was a really goofy, unadmirable stupid time.

I'm not sure why writing for others became harder. Probably a reluctance to give away anything you might conceivably use yourself caused a block. I did it, but it remained hard when it had once been easy.

Every comic can report a few 'gift from the gods' moments.

I have a feeling that about 90% of my life has been shaped by my voice, both as an embarrassment and as an advantage. There was always the terrible incongruity of this deep voice barreling out of this little body. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was aware that it was ludicrous, that it took on an importance that wasn't really there.

I think we live in an age of increasing mediocrity.

There were several things a Yale freshman was supposed to be able to do. You had to demonstrate in the Olympic-size Yale pool that you could swim 50 yards or be inducted into swimming class.

I'm the only talk show host, I think, if there's such a category in, what's called, the book of records, to have a guest die while we were taping the show, yeah.

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.

I'm sure I've all but lost friends by maintaining that, despite their love for it, I always saw Stanley Kramer's 'It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World' as more of an exercise in anti-comedy than humor.

I love my own coincidences and love to hear other peoples' stories.

Japanese is sort of a hobby of mine, and I can get around Japan with ease.

I'm not freakishly short. I had, on my show, used shortness as a joke subject; it didn't really bother me.

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

Show people tend to treat their finances like their dentistry. They assume the man handling it knows what he is doing.

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

It's a tribute to the human brain that anyone is able to function out there on television in a talk situation that is entirely artificial.

It's a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn't want to hear.

Obviously those who burn to be professional jesters mean that they want to be successful comedians. And those are always an elite, microscopic portion of the population. But oh, how they try.