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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

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Alan King
Age: 76 †
Born: 1927
Born: December 26
Died: 2004
Died: May 9
Actor
Film Actor
Film Producer
Stage Actor
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Time
Oppression
Wrote
Read
Father
Thought
Dickens
Firsts
Bigotry
First
Talked
Things
Jewish

More quotes by Alan King

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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.
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The world is full of little dictators trying to run your life.
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My mother kept the house clean and we ate good. I didn't know we were poor until I started giving interviews.
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Everything my mother made had to cook for 80 hours, and when she made matzoh balls she didn't know fluffy. Everything sank.
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I made it, Ma - Carnegie Hall. And I didn't have to practice.
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My favorite way to spend Saturday is in and out of bed, watching sports on TV and eating.
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My son says I never tell stories about anyone who's living.
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You do live longer with bran, but you spend the last fifteen years on the toilet.
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It's not easy being a father, but I've been allowed a comeback.
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If you stop and think about it, nearly all great humor is at the expense of someone or something.
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The ability to absorb a book and make someone else's words and story your own was exactly was I was doing on stage.
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My brother is the youngest member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons. And I wouldn't let him cut my nails.
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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.
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I just never saw my mother in any other room but the kitchen. There were always pots going.
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I won't eat in a place that has suits of armor.
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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.
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My father was a dreamer - my hero. He was a smart, tough guy from Poland, a cutter of lady's handbags, an old socialist-unionist who always considered himself a failure. His big line was: 'Don't end up like me.'
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And humor has always been a weapon. You want to get even on somebody? You want to attack somebody? Make fun of them.
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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.
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As life's pleasures go, food is second only to sex. Except for salami and eggs. Now that's better than sex, but only if the salami is thickly sliced.
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