Quote

A biggest mistake I made when I started doing a talk show was I thought you had to read the books.

Dick Cavett

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Dick Cavett
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: November 19
Actor
Artistic Gymnast
Host
Screenwriter
Television Presenter
Writer
Gibbon
Nebraska
Richard Alva Cavett
Shows
Thought
Biggest
Book
Started
Made
Mistake
Books
Talk
Show
Read

More quotes by Dick Cavett

Image
There were several things a Yale freshman was supposed to be able to do. You had to demonstrate in the Olympic-size Yale pool that you could swim 50 yards or be inducted into swimming class.
Dick Cavett
Image
I had to fight the intellectual label when I started in television, because, first of all, it's not going to help you commercially, and also, it wasn't particularly true of me. I mean, if anybody thought I was an intellectual, they probably had never really seen one.
Dick Cavett
Image
It was at a vividly bad time in Norman Mailer's life that I met him, and a sort of water-treading time in mine. He had stabbed his wife, and I was a copy boy at Time magazine.
Dick Cavett
Image
Obviously those who burn to be professional jesters mean that they want to be successful comedians. And those are always an elite, microscopic portion of the population. But oh, how they try.
Dick Cavett
Image
I haven't ever found any great writing on that wonderful and often unappreciated art form, the insult.
Dick Cavett
Image
Years have passed since I have set foot in a comedy club. If the comic is doing badly it's painful, and if the comic is doing brilliantly, it's extremely painful.
Dick Cavett
Image
Can you picture yourself at the age 60 doing what you do now?
Dick Cavett
Image
You have to be on TV a surprisingly long time before you're stopped on the street. Then, when you are, you get a lot of, 'Hey, you're great! What's your name again?'
Dick Cavett
Image
A grown man, weeping, is a tough thing to see.
Dick Cavett
Image
Unpleasant reading on the subject of anger tells us that there's not really anything wrong with it. In limited amounts. It can even be a good thing. A pressure valve.
Dick Cavett
Image
It was well after college that I learned about depression. I got my first job for Jack Paar. I realized I was sleeping 14 hours a day and just living for the Paar show.
Dick Cavett
Image
When I'm doing an appearance somewhere and taking questions from the audience, I can always count on: 'Tell about the guy who died on your show!'
Dick Cavett
Image
I'm the only talk show host, I think, if there's such a category in, what's called, the book of records, to have a guest die while we were taping the show, yeah.
Dick Cavett
Image
I like when the ice gets thin, the going gets rough, the guests get edgy.
Dick Cavett
Image
It's not always easy to identify your own voice. It comes with time.
Dick Cavett
Image
I've actually gotten so I don't associate television with entertainment very much.
Dick Cavett
Image
To label me an intellectual is a misunderstanding of what that is.
Dick Cavett
Image
It's lamented that the youth get their news from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. It's lamentable that they get more from them than from the news.
Dick Cavett
Image
If (O.J. Simpson) is acquitted, I will renounce my citizenship. And if I converse with him at a cocktail party, I will say, 'Well, there are so many people here who haven't murdered anyone. I think I'll go talk to them.' I'll also riot.
Dick Cavett
Image
To call New York's traffic at holiday time a nightmare is to understate.
Dick Cavett