Carol Burnett

My grandmother and I followed my mother here, to a house a block north of Hollywood Boulevard but a million miles away from Hollywood, if you know what I mean. We would hang out behind the ropes and look at the movie stars arriving at the premieres.

You have to have faith that there is a reason you go through certain things. I can't say I'm glad to go through pain, but in a way one must, in order to gain courage and really feel joy.

It's also selfish because it makes you feel good when you help others. I've been helped by acts of kindness from strangers. That's why we're here, after all, to help others.

I've always been optimistic. And I have a feeling that it happened because of going to all those movies with my grandmother in the '40s because there was no cynicism.

Edgy is fine - I'm not a prude by any stretch of the imagination - but what's wrong with a good ol' belly laugh? I miss that.

My favourite comedian, of course, is Tim Conway. He has a way about him - being that belly-laugh kind of funny, and he has the improvisational skills, too. I've never seen anybody better.

On the good days, my mother would haul out the ukulele and we'd sit around the kitchen table - it was a cardboard table with a linoleum top - and sing.

I wish my mother had left me something about how she felt growing up. I wish my grandmother had done the same. I wanted my girls to know me.

I struggled for a while, but when I was cast in an Off Broadway show called 'Once Upon a Mattress,' that kind of put me on the map.

I think the reason I was successful is that I was never cynical.

When I was in college at UCLA, I took a playwriting course. I was all set to be a writer. But I had to take this acting class as a theater arts major. I had to do this scene in a one-act comedy. I just said this line, and then... this laugh happened. I thought, 'Whoa. This is a really good feeling. What have I been missing?'

I am not a person who yells at all, but I realized that I have always felt so good after doing the Tarzan yell, after doing Charo, or screaming as Eunice.

It all happened the way it was supposed to. I wouldn't change anything. I had such a great run.

My preference is for people who can do sketch comedy or situational comedy, where it's not a joke, but it's telling a story.

My grandmother and I would go see movies, and we'd come back to the apartment - we had a one-room apartment in Hollywood - and I would kind of lock myself in this little dressing room area with a cracked mirror on the door and act out what I had just seen.

I never regretted turning down anything, I never regretted losing a job because I always felt something else was out there.

You have to go through the falling down in order to learn to walk. It helps to know that you can survive it. That's an education in itself.

Before you go to bed, write down three 'gratefuls' for the day and three 'did wells' (they can even include something as simple as doing the laundry)-the results can be amazing!

I have always grown from my problems and challenges, from the things that don't work out, that's when I've really learned.

But I didn't ask to have somebody nose around in my private life. I didn't even ask to be famous. All I asked was to be able to earn a living making people laugh.

I had a good loud voice and I wasn't afraid to be goofy or zany.