Dick Van Dyke Quotes

You can spread jelly on the peanut butter but you can't spread peanut butter on the jelly.

We should never judge a day by its weather.

It means you never know what's going to happen,' I said. 'You do your best, then take your chances. Everything else is beyond our control.

Those songs [Mary Poppins score] didn't just get under my skin, they became a part of me then and there, and thinking about it now, they've never left.

Life is like a box of chocolates, I'm a nerd and I read books

We all need something to do, someone to love, and something to hope for.

I didn't know the answers, but I could feel that the things that gave life meaning came from a place within and from the nurturing of values like tolerance, charity, and community.

In general, things either work out or they don’t, and if they don’t, you figure out something else, a plan B. There’s nothing wrong with plan B.

Wisdom: "Oh, fantastic. We've got an army made up of fairies and Beatles, and we're fighting H. G. Wells' martians and bloody Jack the Rippers. Who's next? Dick Van Dyke? Mr Bean? John Cleese and his dead parrot?

[My mother] once cooked a ham and later found it in my father's shirt drawer. I am not kidding.

Take chances, make mistakes. That's how you grow. Pain nourishes your courage. You have to fail in order to practice being brave.” – Mary Tyler Moore

Why is it amazing that I don’t act my age? Why should I act my age? Or more to the point, how is someone my age supposed to act? Old age is part fact, part state of mind, part luck, and wholly something best left for other people to ponder, not you or me. Why waste your time? I don’t.

Be careful not to trip over the ottoman.

I have also heard and read various accounts of why they [Sheldon Leonard and Carl Reiner] liked me. My favorites? I wasn't too good-looking, I walked a little funny, and I was basically kind of average and ordinary. I guess my lack of perfection turned out to be a winning hand. Let that be a lesson for future generations.

Scripture says you should put aside childish things when you grow up. I take that to mean willfulness, self-centeredness, and things like that—not imagination, creativity, and joyful curiosity.

Hope is life’s essential nutrient, and love is what gives life meaning. I think you need somebody to love and take care of, and someone who loves you back. In that sense, I think the New Testament got it right. So did the Beatles. Without love, nothing has any meaning.

I agreed with his thesis that God was not an all-powerful “cosmic superman” looking down from the penthouse as much as He was Love.

The best writers were philosophers who wrapped their commentary about life in laughter.

Accepting that life is a perfectly imperfect experience is a crucial part of appreciating senior citizenship and coming to terms with the past.

I found myself thinking about what worked for me, and also what I wanted to do for work, what was important to me, and what I wanted my work to say about me.

I love ideas and stories. I always have at least one book going and am on the lookout for the next one. They feed the brain and fuel the imagination. I can’t imagine life without them.

I am a child in search of his inner adult, though the truth is that I’m not searching too hard. I don’t recommend anyone doing so. That is the secret, the one people always ask me about when they see me singing and dancing, whistling my way through the grocery store or doing a soft shoe in the checkout line. They say, “Pardon me, Mr. Van Dyke, but you seem so happy. What’s your secret?” What they really want to know is how I have managed to grow old, even very old, without growing up, and the answer is this: I haven’t grown up. I play. I dance with my inner child. Every day.

Call it fate, luck, or whatever. If you make it past then, as I have, you discover a truth and joy that you wish you had known earlier: there is no plan. As you get older, you figure this out. You relax. You exhale. You quit worrying.

we wanted to pay homage to TV producer-director-actor Sheldon Leonard [the Emmy-winning producer and director of shows like The Danny Thomas Show, The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and more], so that’s where Sheldon and Leonard came from.

For the past twenty years I have been involved with the Midnight Mission, a Los Angeles–based facility dedicated to helping men, women, and children who have lost everything return to self-sufficiency. I spend every holiday there; I don’t get the Christmas spirit until I am at the Mission. Early on I approached a large, mean-looking man and wished him a merry Christmas. The menacing look on his face disappeared—he smiled. “People look through us,” he says. “Or they look past us. Nobody sees us. But you’re looking right at me. That is one helluva gift, man.” His smile was an even bigger gift to me. And it has been that way ever since.

Then I told him about a dream I have frequently, usually just before I wake up. In the dream I am running through an open field, running like a deer—free and fast and wide open without ever getting tired. I dream that a lot, probably because I can’t run like that anymore. It is a spectacular dream: therapeutic, thrilling, energizing, and fun. Then I wake up feeling—” “Like a kid,” Jerry said. “Yes, exactly like I did as a kid.” “And are you disappointed when you get up and look in the mirror?” I shook my head. It is wonderful to remember the feeling of being young, but if you ask me, it’s much more important to revel in what you still have.

The show became its own little world, with its own internal rhythm and high standards.

Something greater than me was happening. And yet, it was happening to me.

I survived—and looking back, I learned not to sweat the little stuff.

You can spread jelly on the peanut butter but you can’t spread peanut butter on the jelly.

..why sit on the sidelines of life at any age?

Everyone lives and dies, and although we don’t get to choose the way we die, we do have a big say in the way we live.

Every single of one of the station's phone lines lit up. The switchboard looked like a Fourth of July display.

In my early fifties, I was going through a phase where few things felt right and I was trying to figure out those that did. It was not uncommon. In your twenties, you pursue your dreams. By your late thirties and early forties, you hit a certain stride. Then you hit your fifties, you get your first annoying thoughts of mortality, you begin more serious questioning of not just the meaning of your life but of what’s working, what’s not working, and what you still want, and all of a sudden you don’t know which way is up. You thought you knew but don’t. You just want to get to where life feels okay again.

Like it or not, life is a never-ending confrontation with bouts of uncertainty and chapters of self-discovery. As I was about to learn, it is a series of fine messes that we enter, some wittingly, and others not.

No one expects me to go anywhere soon. Good for me. I am not about to complain. In terms of money, though, my family will be up the creek. I probably shouldn’t say this, but I may have to fake my own death before I’m ninety-five. I feel too good.

You get to that place where you are like a favorite old flannel shirt—well worn, faded, thin in places, but so perfectly comfortable you love it more than anything else in the closet. Like that old shirt, you want to feel great. The outside doesn’t matter as much as the texture and touch, all the memories and miles, and, of course, the fact that it still does its job!

It is a relatively recent phenomenon that human beings worry about old age, social security, medical bills, and long-term care. But you can only plan so much. In general, things either work out or they don’t, and if they don’t, you figure out something else, a plan B. There’s nothing wrong with plan B. Most of life, as I have learned, is a plan B. Or a plan C. Or plans L, M, N, O, P.

And when I was in my thirties, she confessed that when I was little she and my father would go to the movies and leave me at home by myself in the crib. I would be a mess when they returned. “I don’t know how I could’ve done that,” she said. “Me neither,” I replied.

Was there one way? No, not as far as I could tell—other than to feel loved, to love back, and to do the things that make you feel as if your life has meaning and value, which can be as simple as making sure you spend time helping make life a little better for other people. I

Over the past year, I have realized something about myself. I suffer from a form of claustrophobia: I hate being at home by myself. I am a people person. My life has been a magnificent indulgence. I’ve been able to do what I love and share it. Who would want to quit? I suppose that I never completely gave up my childhood idea of being a minister. Only the medium and the message changed. I have still endeavored to touch people’s souls, to raise their spirits and put smiles on their faces.

He wanted the show to be fresh to audiences 50 years down the line.

It wasn't work. I played myself.

I wanted to be able to talk about my work at the dinner table and hold my head up on Sundays when my wife and I led our children into the Brentwood Presbyterian Church, where I was an elder. I did have a wild side, and I showed it every time I walked through the front door and my littlest child, Carrie Beth, made me dance to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass’s hit song “Tijuana Sauerkraut.

I guess my lack of perfection turned out to be a winning hand. Let that be a lesson for future generations.

Carl envisioned a show that would be timeless. He wanted it to be fresh to audiences fifty years down the line.

We called ourselves the Burfords—Reverend Burford, Grandfather Burford, Cousin Burford, and so on.

Julie’s voice could have been used to tune a piano. She was pitch perfect—and I never was. I was enjoyably close.

As a younger man, though, I lacked confidence, the confidence that comes with experience. I worried and stressed way more than I should have. Now I see that worrying and stressing never helped accomplish anything. It was only when I let myself go and had fun that the magic happened—and continues to happen. Here

There used to be a regular poker game at Barbara Sinatra’s house in Malibu, and a great group of people showed up, including Jack Lemmon, Larry Gelbart, and Gregory Peck, who wore a little green visor like an old-time gambler. Everyone was about the same age, in their late sixties or seventies. I took my longtime companion, Michelle Triola, there because she loved to play poker. One night, back when I was doing Diagnosis Murder, I let her off and told the gang I was going back home. “I’m the only one here who doesn’t play poker,” I said. “You’re the only one here who’s working,” said Gregory Peck.

For example, in the past, it was revealed that the actor Dick Van Dyke had experienced severe headaches that affected his sleep and caused chronic fatigue. Over a seven-year period, he saw a number of different healthcare professionals, received a CAT scan, MRI, and a spinal tap, along with other tests, but everything came back negative. It wasn’t until his dental implants were removed that he finally received relief from his symptoms.

We formalized our group as the Vantastix and sang at dinner parties and charity events. My favorite venue though, was the City of Hope, where we went room to room singing for kids battling cancer. In 50 plus years of show business, I never had a better audience. Most of those little kids were bald; a fair number could barely sit up in bed and there was a sad handful who could not even do that. We stopped at the bed of a very sick 15-year-old boy. We tiptoed into his room and quietly sang a song; he did not react. Thinking he was asleep, we began to file out but suddenly we hear a thin voice ask, "Could I hear another one, please?" We turned around and sang a whole bunch of songs. He barely opened his eyes. But after we finished Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, I saw his mouth curl into a faint smile. As far as I'm concerned, applause does not get any louder.

That reminded me of my own fateful story, which I proceeded to tell him.

One day I noticed that Marty was missing a finger, and I wondered how he could still manage to play complicated pieces. He had lost the finger in an accident, he explained, then retaught himself to

This episode plays wonderfully on radio because, just as the raft fills the room, so the imaginations of listeners expand to their fullest to visualize the incongruous scene and the expressions on the faces of thunderstruck visitors. “The Curious Thing About Women” episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, in which Laura Petrie opens a package which contains a life raft, is funny, but the raft doesn’t consume the whole room as the McGee raft extends to all corners of our minds.

Hope is Life's essential nutrient, and love is what gives life meaning. I think you need somebody to love and take care of, and someone who loves you back. In that sense, I think the New Testament got it right.

I met my agent, Sol Leon, for lunch at the commissary, and talked through my concerns. He asked the obvious questions: What kind of films did I want to make? Where did I see myself going in terms of movies? What sort of scripts should he look for? “I’ve thought about this,” I said, “and I’m pretty clear on it. I only want to make movies that my children can see.” “Only kids’ movies?” he asked. “Not kids’ movies,” I clarified. “I want to make movies that I can see with my kids and not feel uncomfortable.

I could play many types of characters on camera, but all were, in some way, going to be variations of me, and I was conscious of who I was. I wasn’t a prude or a goody two-shoes, but I was, in many ways, still the boy my mother praised for being good, and though older and more complex, I was content with remaining that good boy. I wanted to be able to talk about my work at the dinner table and hold my head up on Sundays when my wife and I led our children into the Brentwood Presbyterian Church, where I was an elder.

As I’d found time and again throughout my life—and would continue to find—you do what you can, say your prayers, and hope for the best.

We knew great TV began with great writing, not great acting, and that is a distinction that can’t ever be ignored or underestimated. TV just won’t work any other way. It all starts on the page.

The original house had been replaced by an indoor flower market with an arched iron and glass roof. Eliza Doolittle, as played by Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, would have bought her violets there before moving off to display the worst cockney accent this side of Dick Van Dyke.

I'm acutely aware that I'm, you know, could go any day now, but I don't know why it doesn't concern me. I'm not afraid of it. And I have that feeling, totally against anything intellectual I have, that I'm gonna be alright.

Usually a prior inconsistent statement by a witness is a credibility killer. At best, you’re left doubting the witness’s memory; at worst, his honesty. But Schwab was so sturdily forthright you just knew he’d made an honest mistake. He endeared himself to the spectators in court by recounting the process by which he had verified in his own mind the Akita encounter. He had an unvarying nightly routine, centered on old reruns. A cable network showed his favorites and he always watched the Dick Van Dyke Show, which ended at 10:30. Then he would take his dog for a half-hour walk, returning in time to catch the opening minutes of the eleven P.M. showing of Mary Tyler Moore.