> "I think what would really be terrible would be to watch a retrospective and see yourself age forty years over a period of forty-five minutes. That'd be traumatic. And maybe one day I'll be able to go back and look at those old films with a charitable eye. The hard part is not to add any ornaments or embellishments to your memory of them. But maybe that's asking the impossible."
>"What you're able to achieve on the screen has nothing to do with you. The only thing sometimes I think is that you pick up certain mannerisms from characters that you play and they become part of the way you present yourself. The only two things that ever stuck to me were, unfortunately, from Rocky Graziano. I never used to spit in the street and I was with Rocky for about nine weeks before the picture began filming, and I spit in the street. It sickens my wife. I never used to swear. I never used any kind of foul language. Now, it's not worth being in the same room with me. And it's funny, of all the attributes that could have stuck to me, that those were the two that stuck the strongest and the longest. But I don't take much of it seriously. I really don't."
>"The embarrassing thing is that the salad dressing is outgrossing my films."
> "Being on President Nixon’s enemies list was the highest single honor I’ve ever received. Who knows who’s listening to me now and what government list I’m on?"
>"I started my career giving a clinic in bad acting in the film ‘The Silver Chalice’ and now I’m playing a crusty old man who’s an animated automobile. That’s a creative arc for you, isn’t it?"
>“We are such spendthrifts with our lives. The trick of living is to slip on and off the planet with the least fuss you can muster. I’m not running for sainthood. I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer, who puts back into the soil what he takes out.”
>"You say I'm an icon. I don't say it. My grandchild does not think I'm an icon."
RIP
