Dana Carvey quotes:

We didn't even think about it, you know? I used to collect laser discs, and you'd have some college professor analyzing It's a Wonderful Life or Citizen Kane, and now it is pretty funny - the idea of commentary for a silly kid's movie, you know?

I used to sneak up to the 8th floor and watch Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo rehearsing 'Saturday Night Live' and could only wonder if I would ever have the chance to be funny. It took me five years to go up the two stories, but it is such a sense of fulfillment to be able to show what I can do on national television.

I got lucky. I won the San Francisco Stand-Up Comedy Competition in 1977 while I was still at San Francisco State.

I think free speech is probably the coolest thing we have in this country, and again, you can label it hate speech and dismiss it, and then you're allowed to censor it.

After years of begging, I got my parents to get me a little Craig tape recorder, a reel to reel. Then I started recording voices, or recording Jonathan Winters off television and stuff like that.

Well, I loved variety in television, I loved sketch comedy. At 'Saturday Night Live,' I stayed almost seven years.

I know it's a cliche, but the whole family is just whacked. I mean, we're all out of our minds. They're the funniest, most eccentric bizarre people I've ever met, my siblings.

I couldn't do any of my other characters, you know? But I could have done the lady. Church Lady's Malibu Beach party is an idea I have for a movie, too. Yes.

I had auditioned for 'Saturday Night Live' two or three times before and never really saw myself there. I looked up to Belushi and Bill Murray and Aykroyd and I never saw myself as in their world.

It's almost like he's started to sound even more exotic the more people started doing him. I don't know why, but there's just something about Al Gore that makes me laugh.

I really enjoy being a dad, and maybe I took it too seriously, but I love being around my kids.

I tried to go out for theater or theater arts, but I was too scared or too intimidated. But I had a lot of friends on the cross country team that had great senses of humor.

I pretty much try to stay in a constant state of confusion just because of the expression it leaves on my face.

I have a theory that if you're famous more years than you're not famous, then you get a little nutty.

The two things that can hurt you are if you need money or if you need fame. Those are the things that can be your Achilles' heel. But if you don't need money and you don't need fame, then you're free.

That's why modern corporate movie making has become so laborious that comedians are kind of kicked out by 50.

When people come to see my stand-up, they get a chance to see my characters interact with each other. I enjoy pushing my characters to the limit. No matter how far out there I go, I look for things that make the characters human.

I'm more of a people pleaser.

The two things that can hurt you are if you need money or if you need fame. Those are the things that can be your Achilles heel. But if you don't need money and you don't need fame, then you're free.

I'm a real people-pleaser.

Describing comic sensibility is near impossible. It's sort of an abstract silliness, that sometimes the joke isn't the star.

When people come to see my stand-up, they get a chance to see my characters interact with each other.

I did a lot of ridiculous television. Between 1980 and '85 I had no confidence, so I did everything I was told to do.

I don't find biology as interesting as politics and humanism. I talk more about existential stuff.

I have this dream life where I get to be a celebrity but I get to navigate the world fairly easily because I'm always in character.

I had written in another draft a completely different kind of fight, but they said they couldn't afford to shoot it. They needed a fight scene, though, so I was told to put a fight scene in, but not the one I had written.

You know, sometimes you can't just take an armadillo, put it in the barn, light it on fire and expect it to make licorice.

If you just kind of live a regular life and make good 'Hollywood' money, you have a certain freedom.

I'm thirty years old, but I read at the thirty-four-year-old level.

I have no regrets. I wanted to raise the kids and be a present father. When I developed a movie, I was gone for a year. That didn't really work for me. That isn't fair to make these life-forms and then disappear.

I enjoy pushing my characters to the limit. No matter how far out there I go, I look for things that make the characters human.

I recently found out about this other super movie star. He only works from about 11:00 to 4:00, so all his movies take like 120 days. But this was a lot of stuff to do in 35 days.

If I only ran when nothing hurt, I would never run.

I think ABC sort of hoped I would be really like Carol Burnett. I mean literally, I think.

I'm a friend of the CEO of Twitter and he showed me how to be on it, but it causes such an uproar if what you post is perceived in a negative light.

If she were a President, she'd be Babe-raham Lincoln!

You know ladies and gentlemen, a long time ago , there were lots of people, but that was a long time ago

I never read the tabloids.

I always tend to think of all of my shows as possibly my last show. I'm like a junior Springsteen, without the underbite.

My characters all start with rhythms and sounds. Once I hear the voice and get into the rhythm, the attitude and the physicality just come out on their own.

While many comics have a secret persona, I fundamentally want to be myself.

I've never really worked on them. Just once in a while one hits me and makes me laugh. My Al Gore was sort of like a gay Gomer Pyle.

A mom and dad found an S&M magazine under their 10-year-old son's bed, and the dad said, 'Well, we sure can't spank him.'

Am I not turtley enough for the Turtle Club? Turtle! Turtle!

Please, O ye Lord, keep Jim Bakker behind bars.

You know, Elizabeth Taylor must be in Heaven going, 'Alright, fire two honey!'

My Obama is getting pretty good ... I think I'll vote for whoever makes my portrayal easier. It takes time to put together a comic impression. It takes time to recognize the tics. Right now, for instance, I could do a dead- on Paul Ryan and people wouldn't recognize it. Personalities take a while to sin...