Years have passed since I have set foot in a comedy club. If the comic is doing badly it’s painful, and if the comic is doing brilliantly, it’s extremely painful. – Dick Cavett
William F. Buckley was a man who had a great capacity for fun and for amusing himself by amazing others. – Dick Cavett
Why are people afraid of ghosts? ‘Ooh, no, I wouldn’t want to see one! I’d be too scared’ – accompanied by a tremolo of fear in the voice – is the common reaction. This puzzles me. I’d think anyone would welcome he opportunity. I’ve never heard of a ghost hurting anybody. – Dick Cavett
The trick to writing for people is, you have to be able to turn them on in your head. And know how they’d word something or how they’d inflect it. – Dick Cavett
Every writer knows that unless you were born gifted with either supreme confidence or outsize ego, handing in your work holds, in some cases, admitted terror. If that’s too strong, at least fairly high anxiety. – Dick Cavett
I have yet to see one of those Comedy Central shows with multiple standup comics that doesn’t include someone the size of the Hindenburg. – Dick Cavett
There are online forms you can fill out to send to your lawmakers, demanding that nothing – nothing at all or in any way – be done about any guns whatever, anywhere. – Dick Cavett
Every time I nostalgically try to regain my liking of John McCain, he reaches into his sleaze bag and pulls out something malodorous. – Dick Cavett
Once I left out what I then considered my best line because there was a suspected column rat in the house. – Dick Cavett
Anyone working in the media can tell you that there seems to be an always-ready-to-explode segment of the populace for whom offense is a fate worse than anything imaginable. You’d think offense is one of the most calamitous things that could happen to a human being; right up there with the loss of a limb, or just missing a parking space. – Dick Cavett
I did standup while still working for Johnny Carson in the mid-’60s, thus gaining the advantage of at least getting laughs from him about how I hadn’t the night before. – Dick Cavett
Greatly talented performers don’t know – often spectacularly – what’s best for them, don’t know what their talents really are, and don’t know what’s just plain wrong for them. – Dick Cavett
I haven’t ever found any great writing on that wonderful and often unappreciated art form, the insult. – Dick Cavett
In the main, ghosts are said to be forlorn and generally miserable, if not downright depressed. The jolly ghost is rare. – Dick Cavett
A biggest mistake I made when I started doing a talk show was I thought you had to read the books. – Dick Cavett
Nobody is going to try to confiscate guns, although some Web sites know better: President Obama, they are certain, wants to. – Dick Cavett
The very phrase ‘Oscar night’ used to accelerate my pulse. For one thing – dating myself – it meant Bob Hope. He always had good, strong jokes, that faultless delivery, and always a new joke about his own films’ failure – once again – to be honored. – Dick Cavett
