- There are two essentials, two and two only, to have any performance in the world in any medium. One is the audience and two is the author. The rest fills in. The two essentials are someone to have the idea to say it and someone to hear it. Without either one of those two, you have nothing.
- Likable plus 45 cents gets you a cup of coffee. They want something that's effectively the same. As an actor, you make money by having them know exactly who you are and what you're gonna do and that's what they come back to see again in one form or another. I'm not a star; there are only about 25 stars in the whole world. You run into trouble even with people like Liv Ullmann, a fine actress, but how many people in Africa ever heard of or care about Liv Ullmann? It's good acting, wonderful, so who cares? Bring on Mickey Mouse.
- I maintain that 90% of what you do in this world, whether it's bagels you eat, clothes you wear, adults you meet when you're little, plays you go to or are in, 90% is horsecrap. Five percent is just godawful and you wish you could forget it, 5% is memorable, so you better enjoy the horsecrap because nine out of ten hours in your life are gonna be spent in horsecrap. So fine, but don't go around giving it first prizes! The first prizes are too valuable--they're really for only for that 5%--of people, food, clothing, time, weather, age, whatever you want to name in your life.
- [on being interviewed all over the world] You have a nice time because people are very nice, basically. I travel a lot and I see a great many of them in all parts of the country and it's always a treat. Everybody has something worthwhile to offer, for at least ten seconds, maybe ten hours, maybe ten years, whatever, but they all have that spark that's worthwhile.
- I used to be known in those days as "Willie the Weeper". Whenever they needed someone to break down on a show confessing a murder or infidelity, anything where something happened to this guy and we watch him disintegrate on camera, they would say, '"Get Windom--bring in Willie the Weeper!"
- [asked by Johnny Carson on a 1971 show, why his classy series My World and Welcome to It (1969) was not renewed] We couldn't beat Gunsmoke (1955), we could not beat "Gunsmoke".
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