I saw John Garfield smoke. He was my idol, so I smoked. I even smoked like him.

There was no sacrifice in acting for me, even when I was starving in New York. I went three days without eating. Charlie Bronson and I sold blood for $5 so that we could eat.

I love the theater. I love the rehearsals. That's where you build a performance. That's your foundation. If you're gonna build a house, you start with the foundation. That makes the house strong. That's the way I build a character, from the foundation out.

Fred Silverman, the head of ABC, he offered me a lot of comedy series but I told him I'd already been the best comedy series around, The Odd Couple, and so when he saw that I did Quincy he called my agent and said, Jack turns me down? All my good series and he ends up playing an undertaker. And this was the HEAD of ABC series.

Time is very important to art and if you don't have the time to select, art goes out the window.

I know know why ... if something not broke, don't fix it. Twelve Angry Men was the perfect movie. The cast was just the best cast you could possibly get together. The director was Sidney Lumet, the best director around. So why they made the remake I don't know.

A world without Tony Randall is a world that I cannot recognize.

Walter Matthau made all the big money and he was wonderful as Oscar Madison on the stage. You couldn't beat him. I know because I replaced him on Broadway. He was just delightful.

We learned out craft. Acting is a craft and you must learn it. I see a lot of talent today in the kids but they don't know how to work. They don't know the craft of acting and you can only get that on the stage in theater. You cannot learn how to act in movies or in television.

We treat old people so badly. There is nothing easy about 80.

I was happy because I was acting. Most of the time for nothing. But I was learning and to learn that you can learn opens up the world for you.

Now I have the voice of a 16-year-old. I'm looking for a doctor who could give me the body of a 16-year-old.

I was at the pinnacle of my career one day and the next day I was put out to pasture. I felt like a race horse with a broken leg.