37 Quotes by Buster Keaton

If one more person tells me this is just like old times, I swear I'll jump out the window.

The first thing I did in the studio was to want to tear that camera to pieces. I had to know how that film got into the cutting room, what you did to it in there, how you projected it, how you finally got the picture together, how you made things match. The technical part of pictures is what interested me. Material was the last thing in the world I thought about. You only had to turn me loose on the set and I`d have material in two minutes, because I`d been doing it all my life.

What really got my goat at MGM were comedians like The Marx Brothers who never wrote their own jokes.

All my life I have been happiest when the folks watching me said to each other, `Look at the poor dope, wilya?

They say pantomime's a lost art. It's never been a lost art and never will be, because it's too natural to do.

The funny thing about our act is that dad gets the worst of it, although I'm the one who apparently receives the bruises . . . the secret is in landing limp and breaking the fall with a foot or a hand. It's a knack. I started so young that landing right is second nature with me. Several times I'd have been killed if I hadn't been able to land like a cat. Imitators of our act don't last long, because they can't stand the treatment.

Charlie Chaplin and I would have a friendly contest: Who could do the feature film with the least subtitles?

I`ve had few dull moments [in my life] and not too many sad and defeated ones. In saying this I am by no means overlooking the rough and rocky years I`ve lived through. But I was not brought up thinking life would be easy. I always expected to work hard for my money and to get nothing I did not earn. And the bad years, it seems to me, were so few that only a dyed-in-the-wool grouch who enjoys feeling sorry for himself would complain.

Like everyone else, I like to be with a happy crowd.