Alan King Quotes

Author Image

Alan King

Profession : Comedian

Birth : December 26, 1927

Banks have a new image. Now you have 'a friend,' your friendly banker. If the banks are so friendly, how come they chain down the pens?

Alan King

Comedy is a reflection. We create nothing. We set no styles, no standards. We're reflections. It's a distorted mirror in the fun house. We watch society. As society behaves, then we have the ability to make fun of it.

Alan King

If you want to read about love and marriage, you've got to buy two separate books.

Alan King

That's the great thing about New Year's, you get to be a year older. For me, that wasn't such a joke, because my birthday was always around this time. When I was a kid, my father used to tell me that everybody was celebrating my birthday. That's what the trees are all about.

Alan King

We get the worrywart, the hypochondriac, the money-grubbing miser, the intractable negotiator... Some would say certain of these refer to the stereotypical, or 'stage' Jew. But objectively speaking, the only crime in humor is an unfunny joke.

Alan King

If you stop and think about it, nearly all great humor is at the expense of someone or something.

Alan King

There's a charm, there's a rhythm, there's a soul to Jewish humor. When I first saw Richard Pryor perform, I told him, 'You're doing a Jewish act.'

Alan King

And humor has always been a weapon. You want to get even on somebody? You want to attack somebody? Make fun of them.

Alan King

When I was in the hospital they gave me apple juice every morning, even after I told them I didn't like it. I had to get even. One morning, I poured the apple juice into the specimen tube. The nurse held it up and said, 'It's a little cloudy.' I took the tube from her and said, 'Let me run it through again,' and drank it. The nurse fainted.

Alan King

Marriage is nature's way of keeping us from fighting with strangers.

Alan King

Age, style, where you come from, where you were born, it's different every time, which, to me, is refreshing because it says that there isn't any one thing, one formula or kind of character that makes a great comedian. Everybody has had a different approach.

Alan King

When I was a kid, I used to send away for those ventriloquist kits on the back of comic books.

Alan King

You do live longer with bran, but you spend the last fifteen years on the toilet.

Alan King

I don't mind being 65, but nobody is gonna tell me to come in at 5:30 to have the early bird special.

Alan King

I'm only... I'm only unhappy when the reviews are bad, but give me a good review and I'm a... I'm just screaming all over the place with joy.

Alan King

When I read Dickens for the first time, I thought he was Jewish, because he wrote about oppression and bigotry, all the things that my father talked about.

Alan King

The world is full of little dictators trying to run your life.

Alan King

Performing is just standing up there and doing something. Performance takes on an edge to it. It has a more dramatic context.

Alan King

Museums are good things, places to look and absorb and learn.

Alan King

I learned to cook in self-defense. My wife doesn't know what a kitchen is. In the first month of our marriage, she broiled lamb chops 26 nights in a row. Then I took over. I used to mind her not caring about food, but no more - as long as I can eat what I want.

Alan King