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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

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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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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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The world is full of little dictators trying to run your life.
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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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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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I had a sympathetic role in 'thirtysomething,' and in two weeks I'm going to do the role again. But in the movies, I just love the heavies. It's much more fun. Villains are a ball. People have been laughing at me for 50 years, so I love to sit in the back of the theater and listen to them hate me.
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Eating takes a special talent. Some people are much better at it than others. In that way, it is like sex, and as with sex, it's more fun with someone who really likes it. I can't imagine having a lasting friendship with anyone who is not interested in food.
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I always plan dinner first thing in the morning. That's the only way I can get through the day, having a specific meal to look forward to at night.
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You know you are getting old when people tell you how good you look.
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I was a high school throw-out.
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Marriage is nature's way of keeping us from fighting with strangers.
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Larry David finds a way to make jokes about the Holocaust. It would never have occurred to me. And it was funny.
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If you want to read about love and marriage, you've got to buy two separate books.
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I won't eat in a place that has suits of armor.
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I think one of the big things about comedy is the ability for the audience to identify.
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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?
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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.
Alan King
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Modesty is not one of my virtues.
Alan King
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A summary of every Jewish holiday: They tried to kill us, we won, let's eat!
Alan King
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My father helped me leave. He said, 'It's all out there, it's not here.'
Alan King