Explore Quotes by Carol Burnett

I had it in my contract with CBS, a very weird clause that was never written before and certainly not since, that if I wanted to do a variety show within the first five years of the contract, CBS would have to put it on for 30 shows.

I had always been quiet and studious in school. I was the high school editor of the newspaper.

I've always been able to recount things, and I have a really good memory about dialog and what people have said before and this and that.

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 was in California, and I was going to UCLA, and I knew I certainly didn't have movie star looks. I remember seeing pictures and photos of Ethel Merman and Mary Martin, who were kind of average looking. I said, 'Well, that's for me, then, to go back to New York and try to be in musical comedy on Broadway.'

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.

I didn't really get comfortable until I got to UCLA, and I had to take an acting course because I was studying theater arts.

Funny is funny. I dare anyone to look at Tim Conway and Harvey Korman doing the dentist sketch, which is more than 40 years old, and not scream with laughter.

I have an iPhone, and I can text, and I can use the phone, and I can even take pictures with it.

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.

We all get where we're going by circuitous journeys, and some of the setbacks are warranted.

I'm into 'House of Cards.' 'Breaking Bad' - my God, did I binge on that!

Steve Martin in 'All of Me,' when he did that whole thing where he was possessed by the spirit in his body? It was brilliant.

I'm hooked on Glenn Close in 'Damages.'

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 felt cynical, and I never felt that I couldn't do what I wanted to do.

I loved doing 'The Family' with Eunice and Mama. They were very interesting because there were no jokes written into those sketches. It was all character-driven. And sometimes it got a little heavy.

I'm not always optimistic. You wouldn't have all cylinders cooking if you were always like Mary Poppins.

I was kind of shy as a kid. I was a pretty good student. I was a wallflower, or nerd, if you will.

When things are a disappointment, try not to be so discouraged.

Comedy = tragedy + time.