Orson Bean

TV has changed everything.

Even I get fan mail.

I don't think that the theater should necessarily pay.

I just feel lucky; I just feel happy to be alive.

I always identified with Frankenstein because as a kid, I never got the girl.

I don't believe most kids enjoy school at all, and that's a shameful waste, considering how curious and excited kids are to learn. They're naturally curious, full of wonder.

You know when I was a kid, I hated every day I was in school, from the kindergarten right through to my last day of high school.

Well, I haven't done that many movies, but the best one was 'Being John Malkovich.'

Being a good game show panelist is like being a virtuoso of the kazoo.

It's never been written about, but before the blacklist of Dalton Trumbo and the Hollywood Ten, there was a de facto blacklist by Communists in the movie industry, and there were a lot of them.

I never thought that I couldn't do what I set out to do. It wasn't from arrogance; it was from ignorance.

I was blacklisted and overnight my TV appearances dried up. Ed Sullivan called to cancel my appearance and said he'd help me when he could, and a year later he did. Only a few wackos wanted the blacklist. It was a protection racket.

I knew people who were real Communists but never made it onto the blacklist and kept on working. There were also people reputed to be Communists who weren't.

TV and film are always slipping in political messages, not ones designed to bring us together but to divide us.

Hollywood is very divisive.

I never cared what anyone thought about me.

I loved New York in the '50s.

The nineteen fifties was a time of tumultuous change.

I love Spike Jonze. He's brilliant.

It's funny, I never watch TV. I watch Fox News.

When I grew up, which was really in the 30s and the 40s, the movies were a moral guideline for me.

Miracles aren't necessarily good for everyone. The parting of the Red Sea, great for the Jews, not so hot for the Egyptian soldiers.

I think America was a miracle. I think God loves this country.

I think it was a miracle that Trump got elected.

If there should be one place where you should forget politics, forget whether you're liberal or conservative, whether you hate Trump or love him, it should be the ballgame.

Most municipalities grow up around commerce; there's a harbor, or the train stops there. Venice, CA was founded for fun.

When I was a kid, FDR on the radio said, 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself.' We should be afraid of fear, or at least of acting out of it.

I adored my mother. She was beautiful, smart, sexy and funny.

Old people come up to me and say, 'Are you still alive? I used to watch you on 'To Tell The Truth' when I was a kid.'

We believe in satisfying our own needs but always considering others.

I certainly have no plans to quit the United States.

I used to picture myself as the old guy eating the Early Bird Specials in the mall.

Young actors ask me for advice. They say, 'Should I get an agent?' I tell them, 'Don't worry about that. Act, act, act. Get into that production of 'The Three Sisters' in a church basement. Consider every audition a chance to act, even if it's just for three minutes. Just do it whenever and wherever you can.'

I did a lot of TV work for more than 30 years in New York and L.A., but I would get on the stage whenever I could.

A lot of people didn't know I was doing Broadway. They thought I was one of those guys who was famous for being famous. I was the one who sat next to Charles Nelson Reilly and said funny things.

My father was an odd stick. He was a member of MENSA and he was a uniformed yard cop for the Harvard police.

I don't expect to be another Walt Disney, but I do get a terrific bang out of being able to say things with pictures. Maybe that means something deep and profound about me - but I doubt it.

Children can become self-reliant and self-disciplined by being free to do what they want to do.

Advertising has always been part show biz.

I paid a price for being on game shows and that was not being taken seriously. But so what? I did what I did and I was glad. But it's a strange form of immortality.

My grandfather lived in New England all his life and was a Vermonter.

I like to work. I like to go every night and play a part.

The people who get bored and want to get out of a long-run aren't the people who actually like to act.

Every restaurant in the world is owned by a Greek.

Part of me is nonhuman and eccentric, which is what a hobbit is, and I don't mind being eccentric.

I make more than a handsome living doing voices for commercials; I hear myself all day on the tube.

Anything that's done correctly is easy.

I mean, acting is so easy! I love it and I'm good at it.

I made a decision a few years back to never again do anything professionally that I didn't want to do.

I think of my life as a cheap novel. Part of you wants it to go on forever, and part of you wants to see how it comes out.