When you’re a kid, you lay in the grass and watch the clouds going over, and you literally don’t have a thought in your mind. It’s purely meditation, and we lose that.
Dick Van Dyke
Just knowing you don’t have the answers is a recipe for humility, openness, acceptance, forgiveness, and an eagerness to learn – and those are all good things.
Dick Van Dyke
I’m always announcing my retirement. I’m still not retired.
Dick Van Dyke
For some reason, as time gets short in life, wasting time escaping through entertainment bothers me.
Dick Van Dyke
The Horny Toad in Cave Creek has great food. When I’m in Arizona, I have at least one meal there. I have a daughter who lives out there, and Dee Dee Wood, who was the choreographer on ‘Mary Poppins,’ lives out there. I still get out there once in a while, but not in the summer.
Dick Van Dyke
There are no sure answers, only better questions.
Dick Van Dyke
I’ve made peace with insecurity… because there is no security of any kind.
Dick Van Dyke
But once we got on the air, everybody except Morey Amsterdam pretty much stuck to the script.
Dick Van Dyke
When I was a kid, I had ambitions for being a television announcer, which was before television took off, you know, in the late ’40s.
Dick Van Dyke
Today, if you’re not an alcoholic, you’re nobody.
Dick Van Dyke
Today, if you’re not an alcoholic, you’re nobody.
Dick Van Dyke
I’m the Steven Spielberg of Malibu.
Dick Van Dyke
I turned down some movies that were quite good. mainly on the basis of taste.
Dick Van Dyke
I’m not a loner. I have to have a life partner.
Dick Van Dyke
The secret to keeping moving is keeping moving.
Dick Van Dyke
I never wanted to be an actor, and to this day I don’t. I can’t get a handle on it. An actor wants to become someone else. I am a song-and-dance man, and I enjoy being myself, which is all I can do.
Dick Van Dyke
In my seventies, I exercised to stay ambulatory. In my eighties, I exercise to avoid assisted living.
Dick Van Dyke
I think it’s being thrown at the wolves, we call it in our business.
Dick Van Dyke
Bob Hope, like Mark Twain, had a sense of humor that was uniquely American, and like Twain, we’ll likely not see another like him.
Dick Van Dyke
I think the saddest moment in my life just happened two months ago. My old nightclub partner passed away, Phil Erickson down in Atlanta. He – I owe him everything. He put me in the business and taught me about everything I know.
Dick Van Dyke
When I was a kid, I had ambitions for being a television announcer, which was before television took off, you know, in the late ’40s. And just through necessity, going out looking for work, I was starting to sing, and dance, and act, and I never expected to do that, nor to have any success at it at least.
Dick Van Dyke
Women will never be as successful as men because they have no wives to advise them.
Dick Van Dyke
Here’s the truth. Your teens and twenties are your Plan A. At 50, you’re assessing whether Plan B or Plan C or any of the other plans you hatched actually worked. Your sixties and seventies, they’re an improvisation.
Dick Van Dyke
Put me on solid ground and I’ll start tapping! At my age they say to keep moving.
Dick Van Dyke
Don’t worry so much. Most of the things you worry about never end up happening.
Dick Van Dyke
I have a lot of friends who say that one of the freedoms of being older is you don’t care what other people think, which I don’t think is right. You care what other people think, but if you’re comfortable in your own skin, that doesn’t bother you.
Dick Van Dyke
One day in ’61, I was looking in the Santa Monica phone book for a number, and there it was: Stan Laurel, Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. I went over there and spent the afternoon with them. And pumped him with questions. I must have driven him crazy. I spent a lot of happy hours at Stan’s house on Sundays just talking about comedy.
Dick Van Dyke
I cannot tell you what it means when children recognize. This is about the third generation for me. And when kids that small recognize me, it really pleases me, very gratifying.
Dick Van Dyke
‘Mary Poppins’ was one of the best experiences of my life.
Dick Van Dyke
I wrote a little autobiography about how luck has to do with everything. It’s called ‘My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business.’ A publisher came to me and said, ‘Write a book,’ so I did. I wanted to call it ‘Everybody Else Has Got a Book.’
Dick Van Dyke
My career is over. I’m just playing now and having a great time. I like to keep busy, and I’m doing what’s fun for me.
Dick Van Dyke
It’s quite hard to act yourself all the time.
Dick Van Dyke
I wanted to be a radio announcer.
Dick Van Dyke
I worked nightclubs all through my 20s, and I was a teetotaler.
Dick Van Dyke
I pay attention to the news. I take the ‘New York Times.’ I do the Saturday crossword.
Dick Van Dyke
I was 5 years old when the stock market crashed; I lost everything.
Dick Van Dyke
As for my studies in school, I was a solid student. I was strong in English and Latin, but I got lost anytime the subject included math. I wish I had paid more attention to biology and science in general, subjects that came to interest me as an adult. I could have gotten better marks, but I never took a book home, never did homework.
Dick Van Dyke
Somebody asked what I wanted on my gravestone. I’m just going to put: ‘Glad I Could Help.’
Dick Van Dyke
I learned everything that I know about comedy and about show business and a lot about life from Carl.
Dick Van Dyke
A lot of violence, a lot of gore in it, and I just didn’t want to do that kind of thing.
Dick Van Dyke
But I wish they would make a musical of some kind. I miss musicals so much. You don’t see them anymore.
Dick Van Dyke
I don’t have any children; I have four middle-aged people.
Dick Van Dyke
I don’t think we’ve got much of a chance to tell you the truth. But our main problem is our audience skews a little older than most shows, and I don’t think our people can stay up that late. I certainly can’t.
Dick Van Dyke
I grew up in Danville, Illinois, right in the middle of the state.
Dick Van Dyke
I have four children and I have seven grandkids.
Dick Van Dyke
I loved to fall down.
Dick Van Dyke
I never made a good movie.
Dick Van Dyke
I think most people will tell you that. They can go along and, while they’re denying that they are addicted, say it’s stress this, it’s this, it’s that. But I – it’s – I think – I really believe there is a gene. Some people become addicted and others don’t.
Dick Van Dyke
I was always in show business but in many ways was not really of show business. I didn’t move in show business circles, particularly, still don’t do it.
Dick Van Dyke
I’ve retired so many times now it’s getting to be a habit.
Dick Van Dyke
My kids are so much better parent than I was.
Dick Van Dyke
My son Barry, of course, has been on from the beginning. And his son Shane is playing now a med student regularly on the show. And at one point or another, I’ve had all four of his kids on the show.
Dick Van Dyke
No, I did night clubs right here in Los Angeles. My partner, Phil Erickson, put me in the business, a guy from my home town, a dear friend who we just lost a couple of months ago.
Dick Van Dyke