Quotes

Baseball as presently played and structured is a bore.

[on his downfall in the late 1980's] I think I must have looked like one paranoid man totally out of control with my personal life. I stepped into my own manure.

I am not a talk-show host. I am an advocate.

I know I have a spark that sometimes ignites my brain before the fuse of my tongue has had the opportunity to go out. But that happens to me in regular life, too.

[on his notorious 1980's talk show] It got out of control because the producers wanted me to top myself every night. If I did something outlandish on Monday night, on Tuesday night, we'd have to think of something even more outlandish. And after awhile, you work yourself toward the edge of the trampoline and you fall off. I fell off a number of times and I found it very displeasing.

[on his acting career in which he basically played himself] I keep getting all these "bad acting of the year" awards, but it's not really acting.

[from a 1998 interview] Everyone says, "Well, Springer's [Jerry Springer] doing your show now." That's not true. I didn't do sleaze. There were times that I did things that were a little sleazy, but I didn't do shows on my neighbor's collie dog having sex with my neighbor's wife.

[on fans of his talk-show] It isn't the rich people who come up and say, "Oh Mort, you're just great." It's the blacks and the ethnics and the blue collars, those guys with too much hair on their shoulder blades. They want some answers.

[on his longtime friend Lloyd Schoonmaker] He knows me, he knows my inner self. When I say we've done everything in life together, I mean it: Eat together, drink together, laugh together ... we've done everything together but have sex.

[on preparing for his 1980's talk-show] Fifteen minutes before the show, I turn on rock'n'roll music as loud as I can, and I dance behind the set, and get myself into a lather and get myself perspiring and out of breath.

I'm Morton Downey Jr., the so-called television tough guy. You know something, I knew cigarettes would never hurt me. Wrong. Now, I've got lung cancer and I could die.

[on smoking] It's the worst habit I've ever had in my life.