Quotes

Fred Astaire was my big hero. As Gene Kelly articulated it, 'He's a phenomenon.' No human body has ever been able to move like that. I don't think people now really appreciate that fact -- that there has never been a human being who moved like that. I've never seen anything like it in my life and I don't think any of us ever will. I know just enough about dance to know how impossible it is to do what he did. It's a really 'sweat' job, the hard work. When it comes to dance, nobody has ever touched him before or since.

[Mayberry was] a wonderful place to visit and people would fantasize about living there. It's a place like Brigadoon that shows up every hundred years. It's a place you dream about living, but you know it's fantasy and you don't care. I grew up among people very much like that -- a bigger town, but not much bigger -- and the neighborhood was very much like that and the people were very much like those characters. And it was fun for me to visit, too. It was one of my favorite half hours ever on television and that was long before I met Andy [Griffith].

[on Vicki Lawrence] Vicki had become on "The Carol Burnett Show" one of the best sketch artists on television, She put on those glasses and a wig and a fat suit, and I bought it!