Quotes from Vicki Lawrence

Everyone has a crazy old lady in their family like 'Mama.' No one ever comes up to me and says 'Mama' is just like them, so no one is ever offended by her. Even young people like to laugh at her. I think she helps kids appreciate their own grandmothers more.

My dad planned a road trip every summer, so we always did the road trip. We did the Eastern Seaboard and learned about the history of the United States.

We did a lot of those road trips, all the mandatory stuff that you should when you're a kid, like Mount Rushmore and the Grand Canyon and the Sequoias and the western coast.

That's my opportunity to hide behind that old lady and say what I want to say.

I think for people that are dealing with this out there, the important thing to know is that this is real. It's called CIU, and there are solutions out there for you.

It's just kinda what I did: played crazy old ladies.

Everyone has fond memories of 'The Carol Burnett Show' and the characters we did.

Harvey Korman was like a private tutor to me. He was such a mentor.

Things have always sort of happened for me. Something else always comes up.

I was married for 10 minutes into a Southern family.

I often feel like I could fall off the face of the Earth. As long as 'Mama' was around, nobody would really miss me. People really think of her as an actual person. People all the time see me and ask, 'Where's Mama?' Like she should be with me.

When I started on the 'Burnett' show, I was just out of high school, and when we went off the air, I was 28 years old, married with two kids. At that point I felt I really wanted to be mommy to my children. But I found that after a year and a half, I really missed the part of myself that was an actress.

I think I'm pretty average. Typical.

When I was in high school, in my generation, I thought that you got a logical, sensible job, or you got married.

Anybody who has spent time with the networks - in fact, you don't even have to spend time with the networks, all you have to do is just watch primetime TV - and you think, 'What the hell are they doing? I could run the network better.' And I think everybody feels that way.

We all know him: everybody has an Archie Bunker in their family, so you love to laugh at him, and you never take it personally; everybody just has a ball laughing at him.

I think it is a universal problem that we are so often cruel to the people we love.

The thing that everybody loves about the 'Burnett Show' was that you felt like you were really there - all that fun stuff stayed in the show, and I think that's why everybody remembers it so fondly because that just doesn't happen anymore on television.

I go out and speak to women's groups all the time, and I say, 'Guys, you gotta laugh and find the humor in things. You gotta pass it on.'

My parents raised me to believe that when one door slams in your face, turn around because there's probably another door opening up somewhere.

I am opinionated and want to be part of the conversations.

Life is much too serious to be taken seriously.

There's nobody telling Oprah what to do. There's no one telling David Letterman what he can and can't do. You've got to have 100 percent support from everybody who's behind the show, across the board.

I really am a cockeyed optimist.