Dick Van Dyke > Quotes

“You can spread jelly on the peanut butter but you can't spread peanut butter on the jelly.”
― Dick Van Dyke, My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business

“It means you never know what's going to happen,' I said. 'You do your best, then take your chances. Everything else is beyond our control.”
― Dick Van Dyke, My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business

“We should never judge a day by its weather.”
― Dick Van Dyke, Faith, Hope and Hilarity: The Child's Eye View of Religion

“Those songs [Mary Poppins score] didn't just get under my skin, they became a part of me then and there, and thinking about it now, they've never left.”
― Dick Van Dyke, My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business

“We all need something to do, someone to love, and something to hope for.”
― Dick Van Dyke, My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business

“Life is like a box of chocolates, I'm a nerd and I read books”
― Dick Van Dyke

“I didn't know the answers, but I could feel that the things that gave life meaning came from a place within and from the nurturing of values like tolerance, charity, and community.”
― Dick Van Dyke, My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business

“In general, things either work out or they don’t, and if they don’t, you figure out something else, a plan B. There’s nothing wrong with plan B.”
― Dick Van Dyke, Keep Moving: And Other Truths About Living Well Longer

“I have also heard and read various accounts of why they [Sheldon Leonard and Carl Reiner] liked me. My favorites? I wasn't too good-looking, I walked a little funny, and I was basically kind of average and ordinary. I guess my lack of perfection turned out to be a winning hand. Let that be a lesson for future generations.”
― Dick Van Dyke, My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business

“Why is it amazing that I don’t act my age? Why should I act my age? Or more to the point, how is someone my age supposed to act? Old age is part fact, part state of mind, part luck, and wholly something best left for other people to ponder, not you or me. Why waste your time? I don’t.”
― Dick Van Dyke, Keep Moving: And Other Truths About Living Well Longer

“I am a child in search of his inner adult, though the truth is that I’m not searching too hard. I don’t recommend anyone doing so. That is the secret, the one people always ask me about when they see me singing and dancing, whistling my way through the grocery store or doing a soft shoe in the checkout line. They say, “Pardon me, Mr. Van Dyke, but you seem so happy. What’s your secret?” What they really want to know is how I have managed to grow old, even very old, without growing up, and the answer is this: I haven’t grown up. I play. I dance with my inner child. Every day.”
― Dick Van Dyke, Keep Moving: And Other Tips and Truths About Aging

“Hope is life’s essential nutrient, and love is what gives life meaning. I think you need somebody to love and take care of, and someone who loves you back. In that sense, I think the New Testament got it right. So did the Beatles. Without love, nothing has any meaning.”
― Dick Van Dyke, My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business

“[My mother] once cooked a ham and later found it in my father's shirt drawer. I am not kidding.”
― Dick Van Dyke

“For the past twenty years I have been involved with the Midnight Mission, a Los Angeles–based facility dedicated to helping men, women, and children who have lost everything return to self-sufficiency. I spend every holiday there; I don’t get the Christmas spirit until I am at the Mission. Early on I approached a large, mean-looking man and wished him a merry Christmas. The menacing look on his face disappeared—he smiled. “People look through us,” he says. “Or they look past us. Nobody sees us. But you’re looking right at me. That is one helluva gift, man.” His smile was an even bigger gift to me. And it has been that way ever since.”
― Dick Van Dyke, Keep Moving: And Other Tips and Truths About Aging

“Be careful not to trip over the ottoman.”
― Dick Van Dyke, My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business

“Scripture says you should put aside childish things when you grow up. I take that to mean willfulness, self-centeredness, and things like that—not imagination, creativity, and joyful curiosity.”
― Dick Van Dyke, Keep Moving: And Other Tips and Truths About Aging

“In my early fifties, I was going through a phase where few things felt right and I was trying to figure out those that did. It was not uncommon. In your twenties, you pursue your dreams. By your late thirties and early forties, you hit a certain stride. Then you hit your fifties, you get your first annoying thoughts of mortality, you begin more serious questioning of not just the meaning of your life but of what’s working, what’s not working, and what you still want, and all of a sudden you don’t know which way is up. You thought you knew but don’t. You just want to get to where life feels okay again.”
― Dick Van Dyke, My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business

“Then I told him about a dream I have frequently, usually just before I wake up. In the dream I am running through an open field, running like a deer—free and fast and wide open without ever getting tired. I dream that a lot, probably because I can’t run like that anymore. It is a spectacular dream: therapeutic, thrilling, energizing, and fun. Then I wake up feeling—” “Like a kid,” Jerry said. “Yes, exactly like I did as a kid.” “And are you disappointed when you get up and look in the mirror?” I shook my head. It is wonderful to remember the feeling of being young, but if you ask me, it’s much more important to revel in what you still have.”
― Dick Van Dyke, Keep Moving: And Other Tips and Truths About Aging

“Everyone lives and dies, and although we don’t get to choose the way we die, we do have a big say in the way we live.”
― Dick Van Dyke, Keep Moving: And Other Truths About Living Well Longer

“I love ideas and stories. I always have at least one book going and am on the lookout for the next one. They feed the brain and fuel the imagination. I can’t imagine life without them.”
― Dick Van Dyke, Keep Moving: And Other Truths About Living Well Longer

“The best writers were philosophers who wrapped their commentary about life in laughter.”
― Dick Van Dyke, My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business

“I found myself thinking about what worked for me, and also what I wanted to do for work, what was important to me, and what I wanted my work to say about me.”
― Dick Van Dyke, My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business

“I survived—and looking back, I learned not to sweat the little stuff.”
― Dick Van Dyke, My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business

“Accepting that life is a perfectly imperfect experience is a crucial part of appreciating senior citizenship and coming to terms with the past.”
― Dick Van Dyke, Keep Moving: And Other Tips and Truths About Aging

“Call it fate, luck, or whatever. If you make it past then, as I have, you discover a truth and joy that you wish you had known earlier: there is no plan. As you get older, you figure this out. You relax. You exhale. You quit worrying.”
― Dick Van Dyke, Keep Moving: And Other Tips and Truths About Aging

“I agreed with his thesis that God was not an all-powerful “cosmic superman” looking down from the penthouse as much as He was Love.”
― Dick Van Dyke, My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business

“..why sit on the sidelines of life at any age?”
― Dick Van Dyke, Keep Moving: And Other Truths About Living Well Longer

“Every single of one of the station's phone lines lit up. The switchboard looked like a Fourth of July display.”
― Dick Van Dyke, My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business

“No one expects me to go anywhere soon. Good for me. I am not about to complain. In terms of money, though, my family will be up the creek. I probably shouldn’t say this, but I may have to fake my own death before I’m ninety-five. I feel too good.”
― Dick Van Dyke, Keep Moving: And Other Tips and Truths About Aging

“The show became its own little world, with its own internal rhythm and high standards.”
― Dick Van Dyke, My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business