My wife came into my life, and my mother still wanted to be the boss. — Don Rickles

Show business is my life. When I was a kid I sold insurance, but nobody laughed. — Don Rickles

To me, the stand up part in my life is great. I know I can do that. When I get an acting chance, I’m really thrilled. — Don Rickles

I do situations and make fun of authority and life. — Don Rickles

An ‘insult comic’ is the title I was given. What I do is exaggeration. I make fun of people, at life, of myself and my surroundings. — Don Rickles

Being in the Navy, when I came home, it changed your whole life. You’re 18, you go away for two and a half years, you come home–boy, you’re a different person. — Don Rickles

When I got out of high school, I wanted to be an actor but was getting a lot of rejections. I was getting rejected by life. My mother, God rest her soul, told me not to quit. — Don Rickles

You lose your energy, you lose that excitement and it gets the audience up. — Don Rickles

Hell, do I remember the first joke? I was never a jokester. — Don Rickles

I have my own gym. When you do jokes and they sell, you get a gym. — Don Rickles

I don’t really tell a joke per se, I build up an attitude and it becomes a joke. — Don Rickles

I’m not a big one for jokes. I can’t tell a joke, believe it or not. If you gave me a thousand bucks and said, ‘Don, get up at a party and tell a joke,’ I’m the worst. — Don Rickles

I cannot tell a joke. But I can do a situation, that it becomes a joke. — Don Rickles

I don’t really tell a joke, I react to situations. The whole thing is just looking at somebody and showing all our weaknesses and exaggerating them, and that’s how it becomes funny. — Don Rickles

You got to have a lot of courage. Secondly, whatever it is you’re doing you have to believe in it wholeheartedly. Thirdly, you have to be able to stand up in front of people and know that they’ll laugh. — Don Rickles

My father when walked into a room, you could tell that everybody loved him. They really did. He was quite a man. My mother was more into the show biz atmosphere than he was. — Don Rickles

Room service is great if you want to pay $500 for a club sandwich. — Don Rickles

When you enter a room, you have to kiss his ring. I don’t mind, but he has it in his back pocket. — Don Rickles

The transformation has been unbelievable. When I started here, I worked in a place where the Sky Room was on the second floor. — Don Rickles

I think if I took therapy, the doctor would quit. He’d just pick up the couch and walk out of the room. — Don Rickles

I always rib people, but nobody ever gives me a hard time. I don’t know why. Maybe they’re afraid of what I might say. There’s probably a lesson in that somewhere, but I don’t know what it is. — Don Rickles

I still think funny, and people young and old still come and see me. That’s flattering. The day comes that they stop coming, then I’ll know that it’s time to retire to the Jewish ranch. — Don Rickles

Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays. — Henny Youngman

I don’t feel an obligation to give everyone a hard time, but when they’re important people, it’s fun. — Don Rickles

Herb Solo at that time was the head of MGM. I said, ‘I want to live like Clint Eastwood.’ Did I know at that time Clint Eastwood, to him, Heaven was a truck, a dog, and a picnic basket for food or something? — Don Rickles

I was in World War II; I cried when they took me in the Navy. That’s the last time I cried. — Don Rickles

Most people think the character I do onstage is the way I am offstage, but I’m just a regular guy who spends time with his family and who turns on the television and watches a lot of sports. — Don Rickles

The old days were the old days. And they were great days. But now is now. — Don Rickles

No matter where you go in this world, you will always find a Jew sitting in the beach chair next to you. — Don Rickles

People think being in your seventies means sitting around in a chair with a blanket over your legs, drooling. — Don Rickles

They always use the word ‘insult’ with me, but I don’t hurt anybody. I wouldn’t be sitting here if I did. I make fun of everybody and exaggerate all our insecurities. — Don Rickles

I was sitting in the toilet and I was by myself. I was tired of playing with the roller, so I said I’d better write a book. — Don Rickles

I was with George Washington at Valley Forge, sitting around before an attack… gimme a break. That’s over 70 years ago already. — Don Rickles

I take pride in being very unique in what I do. Nobody else can do what I do and I don’t mean to say that egotistically, it’s just something in my personality. — Don Rickles

My style is my personality. It’s always been that way. Being a wiseguy and having fun. It’s always been that way for me, when I was in high school, and in the Navy. It’s not something I rehearse. — Don Rickles

I’ve never had guys sit me down and say this is what you’ve got to do. It’s my personality that makes me one of a kind, and I believe that. — Don Rickles

I stopped smoking. But my personality I still have. I get up in the morning, and not everybody loves me, so if you want to call that a bad habit, there’s that. — Don Rickles