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

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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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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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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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Let's face it: It's difficult enough to be funny without worrying about what is going to offend whom.
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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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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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I just never saw my mother in any other room but the kitchen. There were always pots going.
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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.
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One thing I've never said in my whole life is, 'Let's have dinner at a Japanese restaurant.'
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I was a high school throw-out.
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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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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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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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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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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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When I get up in the morning, I have to decide what I'm going to have for dinner or I can't get through the day.
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My favorite way to spend Saturday is in and out of bed, watching sports on TV and eating.
Alan King
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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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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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The world is full of little dictators trying to run your life.
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