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Phyllis Diller (quotes)
- Comedy is tragedy revisited.
- Self-pity is better than none.
- All mothers are working mothers.
- Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.
- You know what keeps me humble? Mirrors!
- My idea of exercise is a good brisk sit.
- I’m eighteen years behind in my ironing.
- Never go to bed angry, stay up and fight.
- His finest hour lasted a minute and a half.
- I was so wrinkled I could screw my hats on.
- Aim high, and you won’t shoot your foot off.
- My father used to call me the laughing hyena.
- Best way to get rid of kitchen odors: Eat out.
- Every time I go near the stove, the dog howls.
- Our dog died from licking our wedding picture.
- I buried a lot of my ironing in the back yard.
- If my jeans could talk, they’d plead for mercy.
- Housework can’t kill you, but why take a chance?
- The best contraceptive for old people is nudity.
- Like all good ruins, I look better by moonlight.
- A smile is a curve that sets everything straight.
- I’m from such an old family, it’s been condemned.
- Do I believe in Witchcraft? I’m the result of it.
- You want to look younger… rent smaller children.
- I’m at an age when my back goes out more than I do.
- You know you’re old when your walker has an airbag.
- Burt Reynolds once asked me out. I was in his room.
- When I go to the beach, even the tide won’t come in.
- Tennis is like marrying for money. Love means nothing.
- Sex is identical to comedy in that it involves timing.
- The only parts left of my original body are my elbows.
- If you don’t have wrinkles, you haven’t laughed enough.
- A bachelor is a guy who never made the same mistake once.
- Old age is when the liver spots show through your gloves.
- Becoming a comedienne was my way of adjusting to puberty.
- My body’s in such bad shape I wear prescription underwear.
- A terrible thing happened to me last night again—nothing.
- My own laugh is the real thing and I’ve had it all my life.
- I still take the pill. I don’t want any more grandchildren.
- It’s an ill will that blows when you leave the hairdresser.
- I never made `Who’s Who,’ but I’m featured in `What’s That?’
- My photographs don’t do me justice – they just look like me.
- If it weren’t for my adam’s apple, I’d have no shape at all.
- For Fang, getting out of bed in the morning is a career move.
- [When to have a facelift:] If you’re tripping over your neck.
- You know you’re old if they have discontinued your blood type.
- Think of me as a sex symbol for the men who don’t give a damn.
- I don’t like to cook. I can make a TV dinner taste like radio.
- Never refer to your wedding night as the original amateur hour.
- I’m looking for a perfume to overpower men – I’m sick of karate.
- Life is a do-it-yourself kit, so do it yourself. Work. Practice.
- It’s hard to find a negligee in my size. I wear a Junior Mister.
- I became a stand-up comedienne because I had a sit-down husband.
- Carry an oar when you drive. Three times I’ve ended up in water.
- I like to serve chocolate cake, because it doesn’t show the dirt.
- I got my first laugh when my mother entered me in a baby contest.
- Some wives have model husbands, I got one that needed remodeling.
- I have so many liver spots, I ought to come with a side of onions.
- Tennis is like marrying for money. Love has nothing to do with it.
- I will never give up. I am in my 14th year of a 10-day beauty plan.
- My mother-in-law buys her coats in a carper shop. She wears a 9×12.
- I have nothing against dogs. I just hate rugs that go squish-squish.
- How do you know they’re growing up? Well, the bite marks are higher.
- I finally had a ship tattooed to my chest. I wanted something on it.
- My plastic surgeon … said my face looked like a bouquet of elbows.
- Most people get an appointment at a beauty parlor… I was committed!
- I spent seven hours in a beauty shop… and that was for the estimate.
- Health – what my friends are always drinking to before they fall down.
- I once wore a peekaboo blouse. People would peek and then they’d boo.
- By far the most common craving of pregnant women is not to be pregnant.
- My doctor is a family physician. He treats my family and I support his.
- The last thing my kids ever did to earn money was lose their baby teeth.
- You can say the nastiest things about yourself without offending anyone.
- If I wore a peek-a-boo dress, it would be like turning in a false alarm.
- All I ever learned at my mother’s knee was what a bony knee looked like.
- He has so many muscles he has to make an appointment to move his fingers.
- Next to gold and jewelry, health is the most important thing you can have.
- Remember, only a policeman is allowed to express himself on an expressway.
- I am descended from a very long line my mother once foolishly listened to.
- My mother hated me. Once she took me to an orphanage and told me to mingle
- I’d love to slit my mother-in-law’s corsets and watch her spread to death.
- My eight-year-old bought a bicycle with the money he saved by not smoking.
- I’m the woman who used to think that middle-age spread was a cocktail dip.
- It took me three weeks to stuff the turkey. I stuffed it through the beak.
- There’s so little money in my bank account, my scenic checks show a ghetto.
- Nothing was happening in the bedroom. I nicknamed our waterbed the Dead Sea.
- I admit, I have a tremendous sex drive. My boyfriend lives forty miles away.
- Do not taste food while you’re cooking. You may lose your nerve to serve it.
- Once Fang took pep pills and they worked – the only time he ever ran to bed.
- I was the world’s ugliest baby. When I was born, the doctor slapped everybody.
- Remarrying a husband you’ve divorced is like having your appendix put back in.
- Actually, I comb my hair quite often. Of course, I use an electric toothbrush.
- It’s a good thing that beauty is only skin deep, or I’d be rotten to the core.
- I met my husband when a friend sent him over to my house to cure my hiccoughs.
- I serve dinner in three phases: serve the food, clear the table, bury the dead.
- When I was a kid and we used to play Post Office, I was the Dead Letter Office.
- My sister-in-law is so skinny that she has a striped dress with only one stripe.
- … if I invested in a mouthwash stock, bad breath would suddenly become popular.
- My cooking is so bad my kids thought Thanksgiving was to commemorate Pearl Harbor.
- What I don’t like about office Christmas parties is looking for a job the next day.
- My mother-in-law had a pain beneath her left breast. Turned out to be a trick knee.
- This woman was so cross-eyed. She can go to a tennis match and never move her head.
- My sister was so promiscuous she broke her ankle in the glove compartment of a car.
- If it weren’t for baseball, many kids wouldn’t know what a millionaire looked like.
- I’m the only woman who can walk in Central Park at night… and reduce the crime rate.
- There’s such a buildup of crud in my oven, there’s only room to bake a single cupcake.
- Absolutely nothing was happening in my marriage. I nicknamed my waterbed, Lake Placid!
- It’s a certain kind of immortality, because those Disney films do go on and on and on.
- The doctor looked my body over. I said: Is there any hope? He said: Yes. Reincarnation.
- The only thing my husband and I have in common is that we were married on the same day.
- Christmas is a time when everybody wants his past forgotten and his present remembered.
- I asked the waiter, ‘Is this milk fresh?’ He said, ‘Lady, three hours ago it was grass.’
- I realize it is normal to argue. I almost missed World War II watching my parents fight.
- I’m beginning to have morning sickness. I’m not having a baby, I’m just sick of morning.
- Tranquilizers work only if you follow the advice on the bottle – keep away from children.
- Always be nice to your children because they are the ones who will choose your rest home.
- My husband always felt that a marriage and career don’t mix. That’s why he’s never worked.
- The only time I ever enjoyed ironing was the day I accidentally got gin in the steam iron.
- Any time three New Yorkers get into a cab without an argument, a bank has just been robbed.
- My timing is so precise, a heckler would have to make an appointment just to get a word in.
- I’ve been asked to say a couple of words about my husband, Fang. How about short and cheap?
- No matter what time your guests arrive, pretend they’re early, so naturally you’re not ready.
- You know you’re old when someone compliments you on your alligator shoes, and you’re barefoot.
- Doctors say it’s okay to have sex after a heart attack, provided you close the ambulance door.
- I want my children to have all the things I couldn’t afford. Then I want to move in with them.
- Fang and I are always fighting. When we get up in the morning, we don’t kiss; we touch gloves.
- I love to go to the doctor. Where else would a man look at me and say, ‘Take off your clothes’?
- I asked my hairdresser what would look good on me. She says a Los Angeles Rams football helmet.
- Fang can’t stand to see trash & garbage lying around the house. He can’t stand the competition.
- Whatever you may look like, marry a man your own age – as your beauty fades, so will his eyesight.
- The real reason your pro tells you to keep your head down is so you can’t see him laughing at you.
- If your husband wants to lick the beaters on the mixer, shut them off before you give them to him.
- Choose a checked or striped wall paper. People will be halfway home before they are able to focus.
- Remember there is no way you can give the father custody of the children without getting a divorce.
- Your husband drinks too much if he says he never drinks alone, but considers the goldfish somebody.
- I’m eighteen years behind in my ironing. There’s no use doing it now, it doesn’t fit anybody I know.
- [On plastic surgery:] When I die, God won’t know me. There are no two parts of my body the same age.
- Your husband is lazy if coffee doesn’t keep him awake – even when it’s hot and being spilled on him.
- When I go to bed at night, I’ve got so much grease on my body I wear snow chains to hold up my gown.
- My house used to be haunted, but the ghosts haven’t been back since the night I tried on all my wigs.
- I was in a beauty contest once. I not only came in last, I was hit in the mouth by Miss Congeniality.
- The reason women don’t play football is because 11 of them would never wear the same outfit in public.
- I wanted to become me, totally me. The more me, the better. I instinctively knew this and I was right.
- My mother-in-law must be the probation officer I got for the crime I committed of marrying my husband.
- My husband is so cheap. On Christmas Eve, he fires one shot and tells the kids Santa committed suicide.
- … if they [your children] write their names in the dust on the furniture, don’t let them put the year.
- They just elected me Mis Phonograph Record of 1966. They discovered my measurements were 33 1/2, 45, 78!
- When I go to the beauty parlor, I always use the emergency entrance. Sometimes I just go for an estimate.
- Just because I have rice on my clothes doesn’t mean I’ve been to a wedding. A Chinese man threw up on me.
- Maybe it’s true that life begins at fifty. But everything else starts to wear out, fall out, or spread out.
- We named all our children Kid. Well, they have different first names, like Hey Kid, You Kid, Dumb Kid . . .
- Everybody knows how lazy he is. One day the neighbors saw Fang mow the lawn and I got three Get Well cards.
- Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing up is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.
- Most children threaten at times to run away from home. This is the only thing that keeps some parents going.
- It’s true Fang and I fight, but we’ve never gone to bed mad. Of course, one year we were up for three months.
- I hate smart sales clerks. I said to one, What do you have in lingerie? She says, More than you’ll ever have!
- When buying a new house … Buy the house far enough away from school so your kids can’t come home for lunch.
- I’ll never forget my first fur. It was a modest little stole. Modest? People thought I was wearing anchovies.
- We Californians are constantly accused of not having seasons, but we do. We have fire, flood, mud, and drought.
- I don’t know how you feel about old age… but in my case I didn’t even see it coming. It hit me from the rear.
- Before you get married you should meet your fiance’s parents. It is not enough that you like his parole officer.
- I honestly believe there is absolutely nothing like going to bed with a good #book; or a friend who’s #read one.
- Have the man at the station put the air in the tires. I did it once myself. Have you ever seen a car with a limp?
- A stand-up comic is judged by every line. Singers get applause at the end of their song no matter how bad they are.
- The last thing I’d learn, well into my career, was how to get on, how to say hello, how to get in with the audience.
- Comedy is tragedy revisited or hostility. It is mock hostility, of course, or it would be ugly; we would have a war.
- Your husband is lazy if when he leaves the house, he finds out which way the wind is blowing and goes that direction.
- When he proposed he said, “We’ll make such beautiful music together,” but in this duet, his part seems to be all rests.
- I always wondered how I could tell when the right one came along – but it was easy. He was the only one that came along.
- I remember once a vocational director said to Fang, “You must develop some mechanical skills – like getting out of bed.”
- They always say to Californians that we don’t have seasons. Of course, that is not true. We have fire, flood, mud and drought.
- get married with the feeling it is going to last. Not like the bride I know who doubled the wedding cake recipe and froze one.
- If your house is really a mess and a stranger comes to the door greet him with, ‘Who could have done this? We have no enemies!’
- A passport picture is a photo of a man that he can laugh at without realizing that it looks exactly the way his friends see him.
- Religion is such a medieval idea. Don’t get me started. I have thought about every facet of religion, and I can’t buy any of it.
- Just the other day I said to Fang, “Don’t you think we’ve got a storybook romance?” and he said, “Yes, and every page is ripped.
- I should have suspected my husband was lazy. On our wedding day, his mother told me: “I’m not losing a son; I’m gaining a couch.”
- The reason I’m not an alcoholic is I don’t like to drink in front of the kids . . . and when you’re away from them, who needs it?.
- Everybody knows how much time Fang spends in bed. A local store that gives a 30 days’ trial on mattresses gives Fang only 15 days.
- Your husband is lazy if the directions on his medicine say, “A teaspoon before going to bed,” and in one day he uses seven bottles.
- I am constantly being asked about individuals. The only way to win is as a team. Football is not about one or two or three star players.
- My husband is so useless that it’s hard for me to be romantic with him. I get down on the floor and say, If you love me, blink your eyes.
- Fang took the entire family out for coffee and donuts the other night. The kids enjoyed it. It was the first time they’d ever given blood.
- Would you believe that I once entered a beauty contest? I must have been out of my mind. I not only came in last, I got 361 get-well cards.
- Keep at least one window pane clean to check the weather. Once when I didn’t do this I sent the kids off with umbrellas for six weeks straight.
- We spend the first twelve months of our children’s lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve telling them to sit down and shut up.
- Too many comics today ramble. By the time they get to the punch line, the audience has either gone to sleep, gone to the bathroom or gone to bed.
- One [expert] said, ‘Always have a baby sitter who is acquainted with your children.’ If they were acquainted with my children, they wouldn’t sit!
- This man I was going with asked me for my finger measurements. I thought he was going to buy me a ring for Christmas, but he gave me a bowling ball.
- Women want men, careers, money, children, friends, luxury, comfort, independence, freedom, respect, love, and a three-dollar pantyhose that won’t run.
- Mothers-in-law do not make good house pets. Once I had the most wonderful dream — I dreamed that mothers-in-law cost money and I couldn’t afford one.
- I don’t want to sound like I’m on dope, but that hour is a high; it’s as good as you can feel. A wonderful, wonderful happiness, and great power.
- Isn’t my fur stole pitiful? How unsuccessful can a girl look? People think I’m wearing anchovies. The worst of it is, I trapped these under my own sink.
- I’ve tried Buddhism, Scientology, Numerology, Transcendental Meditation, Qabbala, t’ai chi, feng shui and Deepak Chopra but I find straight gin works best.
- When I go to the beach, my grandchildren try to make words out of the veins in my legs. That’s why I still take the pill; I don’t want any more grandchildren.
- In most states you can get a driver’s license when you’re sixteen years old, which made a lot of sense to me when I was sixteen years old but now seems insane.
- When you play spin the bottle, if they don’t want to kiss you they have to give you a quarter. Well, hell, by the time I was twelve years old I owned my own home.
- Have you ever known anyone who bought a fruitcake for himself? Of course not. They are purchased as Christmas gifts, mostly for people you don’t particularly like.
- It would seem that something which means poverty, disorder and violence every single day should be avoided entirely, but the desire to beget children is a natural urge.
- Let me tell you, a discussion that starts, ‘I’ll tell you something you do that irritates me, if you tell me something I do that bothers you,’ never ends in a hug and a kiss.
- Life began on this planet when the first amoeba split. Mankind will still be seeking God, not accepting that God is a spirit; can’t see it, touch it, only feel it. It’s called LOVE.
- To get a roaster clean, send something like baked apples in it to a neighbor. Neighbors always return pans spotless, and you won’t have to use a blow torch on it like you usually do.
- Once my husband said to me, ‘I’m going to have some coffee. Do you want me to put some hot water on for you?’ I thought that was the least he could do considering I was giving birth.
- We have far too many kids. At one time in the playpen there was standing-room only. It looked like a bus stop for midgets. It used to get so damp in there, we’d have a rainbow above it.
- My recipe for dealing with anger and frustration: set the kitchen timer for twenty minutes, cry, rant, and rave, and at the sound of the bell, simmer down and go about business as usual.
- I was the world’s ugliest baby. I have photos of my folks leaving the hospital with sacks over their heads… I asked my mother how to turn off the electric fan. She said ‘Grab the blade!
- Oh, that dog! Ever hear of a German Shepherd that bites its nails? Barks with a lisp? You say, “Attack!” And he has one. All he does is piddle. He’s nothing but a fur-covered kidney that barks.
- This woman goes into a gun shop and says, ‘I want to buy a gun for my husband.’ The clerk says, ‘Did he tell you what kind of gun?’ ‘No,’ she replied. ‘He doesn’t even know I’m going to shoot him.
- You’ve got to realize that when all goes well, and everything is beautiful, you have no comedy. It’s when somebody steps on the bride’s train, or belches during the ceremony that you’ve got comedy!
- Right from the start my parents had left me to fend for myself. Apparently unaware that I was a kid, they invariably treated me like an adult, perhaps because they themselves were no spring chickens.
- On the way to the delivery room, I almost changed my mind about having a baby. I wouldn’t have found it so hard to go ahead with it if I had realized that having a baby was the only way I could ever become a grandmother.
- There isn’t any (afterlife), you dingbat! This is it, baby! Enjoy, carefully! Religion is such a medieval idea. Don’t get me started. I have thought about every facet of religion and I can’t buy any of it. So God made man in His own image? It’s just the other way around. Man made God in his own image. It’s all about money.
- A friend told me the longer you keep Romano cheese, the better it gets. So, I kept it three years. And this thing turned mean. Now and then I’d open the refrigerator door and throw it some food. I’d have to walk it now and then. And then it grew this one leg. And it’s got this ugly fuzz all over it. And the dogs won’t run with it.
- When you hire a person to plan your wedding, this does not include securing the groom. Plan to get married on Friday the 13th. In years to come this will make it much easier to explain why things turned out badly. To look beautiful at your wedding, take time to plan it. It took me a long time to find two ugly bridesmaids and a frumpy little flower girl.
- The constants all through the centuries will be the same; wine, women and song. Other than that, life will be very different technologically. In the year 3000 the universe will be expanding as it will forever, infinitely. We will probe outer space but never find life as evolutionized as ours. We were not created by a deity. We created the deity in OUR image. Life began on this planet when the first amoeba split. Mankind will still be seeking God, not accepting that God is a spirit; can’t see it, touch it, only feel it. It’s called LOVE.
