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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
Firsts
Bigotry
First
Talked
Things
Jewish
Time
Oppression
Wrote
Read
Father
Thought
Dickens

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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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A summary of every Jewish holiday: They tried to kill us, we won, let's eat!
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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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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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The other day my house caught fire. My lawyer said, Shouldn't be a problem. What kind of coverage do you have? I said, Fire and theft. The lawyer frowned. Uh oh. Wrong kind. Should be fire OR theft.
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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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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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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.'
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If you keep yourself alive and current, funny is funny.
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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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I don't mind being 65, but nobody is gonna tell me to come in at 5:30 to have the early bird special.
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Let's face it: It's difficult enough to be funny without worrying about what is going to offend whom.
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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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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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Milton took vaudeville, which, if you look up 'vaudeville' in the dictionary, right alongside of it, it says 'Milton Berle' - and he made it just a tremendous party.
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Modesty is not one of my virtues.
Alan King
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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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It's not easy being a father, but I've been allowed a comeback.
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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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