Benny Quotes

#1. Good girls earn good things." She let my jaw go, her eyes going beyond me toward Benny's house, then coming back to me. "Let yourself have good things." "It's not right," I told her quietly. "Know one thing on God's beautiful earth, and that is" - she leaned into me - "love is never wrong.

Kristen Ashley

#2. I was turning down cigarette campaigns before it became fashionable. I wouldn't let CBS Radio sell 'The Stan Freberg Show' to R.J. Reynolds and American Tobacco, which had sponsored Jack Benny, the man I replaced.

Stan Freberg

#3. I love getting on You Tube to look at the old comics. I am in my element seeing guys like Jack Benny and Phil Silvers give interviews.

Bruce Forsyth

#4. Benny Retzel, a private operative in the employ of the Mutual Protective Agency: Divorce Evidence Our Specialty - You Marry 'Em, We Tail 'Em.

Brett Halliday

#5. Well, there's always Nevada," Benny said. "You can buy anything from a hand laser to an atom bomb there.

Joe Haldeman

#6. Yo! Deadheads," he yelled, waving his sword to taunt them. "Nice try, but you're messing with Benny-freaking-Imura, zombie killer. Booyah!

Jonathan Maberry

#7. England was always very special. It was so important because the reason Benny and I started writing was the Beatles. During the Sixties, England was everything. To be number one in England was more important than being number one in America because England set the tone.

Bjorn Ulvaeus

#8. Benny Goodman was one of the big influences as a clarinet player. That's why I wanted the clarinet.

Lee Konitz

#9. I could do John Wayne, Jack Benny, Jack Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and entertain my friends. But I never seriously considered it as a career choice.

Phil Hartman

#10. Everybody ought to listen to Benny [Carter]. He's a whole musical education.

Miles Davis

#11. Jack Benny had style from the beginning. He stood straight and walked kind of sideways as if he were being gently shoved by a touch of genius.

William, Saroyan

#12. The distance between me and Benny [Goodman], was that I was trying to play a musical thing, and Benny was trying to swing. Benny had great fingers; I'd never deny that. But listen to our two versions of 'Star Dust.' I was playing; he was swinging.

Artie Shaw

#13. -loving someone meant knowing that your life would be worse without them in it.
-Caleb (Benny)

Anna Carey

#14. Listening to Benny [Goodman] talk about the clarinet was like listening to a surgeon get hung up on a scalpel.

Artie Shaw

#15. When I was a kid, we didn't eat in restaurants much, but a good report card meant my sister or I could choose anyplace in town for a dinner out, and I always picked Benny's, a dive bar near the train station, because they had the best nachos around.

Rosecrans Baldwin

#16. I love the English. My God, they brought us 'Benny Hill,' 'Monty Python,' 'The Office,' Neville Chamberlain.

Seth MacFarlane

#17. For all we know, at this very moment, somewhere far beyond all those distant stars, Benny Russell is dreaming of us.

Avery Brooks

#18. Maybe I just didn't want it to be Benny because he really loves her, and if I was wrong about that, it'd be depressing. Who wants to be depressed?"
"Poets," Eve decided. "You have to think they must."
"Okay, other than poets.

J.D. Robb

#19. No, that's not it. The first time we met was at Fat Tuesday's. Benny was playing, this was, I think in 1989?

Benny Green

#20. They are brothers," Benny repeated softly. "That is a bond you cannot break.

Rachel E. Carter

#21. When I grow up I want to be just like Benny Carter!

Dizzy Gillespie

#22. When it came to all around ring generalship, Benny Valgar was on a par with Benny Leonard, though Leonard packed the better punch

Ray Arcel

#23. I play trumpet. And I took all the music courses in college, so I can also play the string instruments, keyboard, the brass and woodwinds - but only well enough to teach them. If you put a violin in front of me, you wouldn't say, 'My God, that guy can play.' It'd probably sound more like Jack Benny.

Jon Tester

#24. When television began, it modeled itself after radio. Many early television programs were radio programs first. 'My Favorite Wife,' 'The Jack Benny Show,' 'Burns and Allen,' 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents.'

David Gerrold

#25. That's got to be Nix," Benny said as he pulled the door open. "Hey, sweetie ... "
Morgie Mitchell and Lou Chong stood on the black porch.
"Um," said Chong, "hello to you, too, sugar lumps.

Jonathan Maberry

#26. Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Eckstine, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Paul Whiteman, Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra, Lionel Hampton, the Mills Brothers, Woody Herman, and Nat King Cole. "Mona Lisa, men have named you,

George Hodgman

#27. At Benny's final moment of life, he tried his best to scream, but couldn't.

Nickel Crow

#28. When they asked Jack Benny to do something for the Actor's Orphanage - he shot both his parents and moved in.

Bob Hope

#29. This one looks good," said Chong over breakfast the next morning.
Benny read out loud from the paper. "'Pit Thrower.' What's that?"
"I don't know," Chong said with a mouth full of toast. "I think it has something to do with barbecuing."
It didn't.

Jonathan Maberry

#30. watched at the window. Very soon the boat turned around again and came in to the dock not far from the lighthouse. It looked like a man who jumped out. But Benny knew that the Cook boy was as big as a man. Benny watched him as he bent over his boat. He took

Gertrude Chandler Warner

#31. Working with Benny was important for me and for black musicians in general.

Lionel Hampton

#32. Benny Anger: What's up, doc?
Doc Manhattan: "Up" is a relative concept; it has no intrinsic value.

Alan Moore

#33. God, Benny, don't blow your nose like that in the church. You'd lift half the congregation out of their seats," Patsy warned.

Maeve Binchy

#34. Stand-up comedy is a very hard thing on the spirit. There are people who transcend it, like Jack Benny and Steve Martin, but in its essence, it's soul-destroying. It tends to turn people into control freaks.

Mike Nichols

#35. Benny explained that it wasn't her sweater. It was borrowed from a fellow. She wondered why she needed to tell so much to strangers.

Maeve Binchy

#36. Benny Goodman's band was integrated before baseball. Even before it was physically integrated, music was integrated. Everyone listened to Armstrong and Ellington. The 20s was called the Jazz Age. It's part of being American.

Wynton Marsalis

#37. In Ecuador the Indian mate was too poor to buy Polaroid glasses but he saw the caudal fins of marlin long before my perfect eyes noticed anything. Benny played pool as if the cue stick emerged from his body. Not my alcohol & geometry. She was an asshole and I couldn't have loved her at gunpoint.

Jim Harrison

#38. But Benny was already walking through the doors and into the bright sunny day, pulling the bottle from his shirt and thrusting it at his father: terrified, astonished, ready for his love.

Molly Antopol

#39. Travis pushed me behind him a few feet and stood tall. I hope you know, Benny, that when I take out your men, I mean no disrespect. But I'm in love with this girl, and I can't let you hurt her.

Jamie McGuire

#40. As for my band, well, my mentors were Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Jimmie Lunceford, and no one had a band more smartly dressed than Duke.

B.B. King

#41. Then Benny muttered, I think I'm in love. Where do you find them?

Kristen Ashley

#42. I have a very strong visual memory of the first time I made him laugh. That was remarkable. I was like, "Oh, God, I just made Jack Benny laugh."

Harry Shearer

#43. I had the chance to play with Benny 'The King' Carter here in Copenhagen for three days in the Montmartre, and two days in Paris. 'What a Thrill.' He knows so much music, and he is the only person that I get the shakes trying to play my horn behind or with him (smile). However, it was a ball.

Ben Webster

#44. Benny and Bjorn, I suppose, already had an idea of which one was going to sing the lead. I mean, they knew perfectly well our ranges and which kind of voice they wanted on a specific song. And sometimes, I envied the choice of Agnetha, I must admit.

Anni-Frid Lyngstad

#45. Jack Benny was, without a doubt, the bravest comedian I have ever seen work. He wasn't afraid of silence. He would take as long as it took to tell the story.

Bob Newhart

#46. There are two kinds of jokes - funny jokes and Jack Benny jokes.

Fred Allen

#47. What brings you happiness?" "Mr. Cohen . . ." "Benny." "Benny, I don't really think much about it. I just go about my life day to day. Stuff happens. Some good. Some bad. I don't know what's at the end of the rainbow, or even if there is a rainbow.

Paul Levine

#48. Benny was awake again. Happened every morning.

Eoin Colfer

#49. You own a dress that won't make my dick get hard?"
Her eyes got squinty, but her mouth stayed closed.
"Can I take that as a no?" he pushed.
"FYI, women don't like it when men talk like that, Benny Bianchi."
"Bullshit, Francesca Concetti. They fuckin' love that shit.

Kristen Ashley

#50. Benny Imura sat in the dark and spoke with monsters.
It was like that every day.
It had become the pattern of his life. Shadows and blood. And monsters.
Everywhere.
Monsters.

Jonathan Maberry

#51. Fern has Ugly Girl Syndrome." Bailey said, out of the blue. "Also known as UGS ... She grew up thinking she was ugly. She doesn't realize that she shed the ugly a long time ago. She's beautiful now. And she's just as pretty on the inside, which is a side benny of UGS.

Amy Harmon

#52. These stories seem at times to be stories of a long-lost world when the city of New York was still filled with a river light, when you heard the Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationery store, and when almost everybody wore a hat.

John Cheever

#53. Mick called Benny. Passed accountability onto me."
"I'm gonna kill him! I'm going to kill that sorry son-of-a-bitch!" America shouted.

Jamie McGuire

#54. Americans think the only funny Brits are John Cleese, Benny Hill and whoever makes our toothpaste. They're not laughing with us, they are laughing at us.

A.A. Gill

#55. I was not influenced by Jack Benny, and people have remarked on my timing and Jack's timing, but I don't think you can teach timing. It's something you hear in your head.

Bob Newhart

#56. Benny gave her an admiring look. He had never heard a woman swear so much in such a short time. He thought it sounded delightful.

Jonas Jonasson

#57. - As long as we think positively, as I said. - I don't think Sonya actually weighs much more than four tons, perhaps four and a half at the most, said The Beauty. - You see, Benny, said Allan. That's what I mean by thinking positively. The problem immediately became a whole ton less.

Jonas Jonasson

#58. The most significant bands I played in when I first got to New York were Bobby Watson's band, Roy Hargrove's first band, Benny Golson's band, Benny Green's trio, and probably the most significant out of all of those, for me personally, was playing in Freddie Hubbard's band.

Christian McBride

#59. Someone stake that bastard, please, and for the sake of the gods, dust Benny off the table by the fountain. The powder's disgusting and it's getting into the blood. (Apollite)

Sherrilyn Kenyon

#60. I just want to sound different than everyone else. I don't care if it sounds bad. I just want people to be like, 'Yo, that dude Benny was different.' Even if it sounds awful, at least they can't say, 'Oh well, I've heard that before.'

Benny Blanco

#61. Every single tune you know from the 1940s until the 1970s was written, arranged, and demoed in the Brill Building. OK, maybe not every song, but writers from Benny Goodman to Lieber & Stoller to Neil Diamond all kept offices there.

Shawn Amos

#62. It's very, very corrupting to the spirit, doing comedy. And you have to be almost a saint, like Jack Benny was, like Steve Martin is, to avoid the corrupting of it, because there's very little work where the actual work and the reward are simultaneous, and comedy is that.

Mike Nichols

#63. It's a spirit that was given me and the relationships and meeting all these great people, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong; through Max I met a lot of people too. My first album was with Benny Carter.

Abbey Lincoln

#64. For a beach bum you're not very chill," said Benny.
Bob frowned. "This beach bum is a retired death god who is getting a little agitated," he said.

Adam Christopher

#65. Place pain in a steel box and let it float away," Benny would say. "Pain will always be there - it's how you deal with it that matters.

Duff McKagan

#66. I had never heard anyone play like Benny Goodman and had never seen anyone like him on the stage. I realize now that what impressed me and stayed with me in memory was - the sounds he made. He played so purely. The music seemed to come from him, not just the instrument he played with such mastery.

Marian Seldes

#67. Benny Goodman plays the clarinet. I play music.

Artie Shaw

#68. Jack Benny really liked my book. I know because he called me up from the library and told me.

Bob Hope

#69. The problem of expressing the contributions that Benny Carter has made to popular music is so tremendous it completely fazes me, so extraordinary a musician is he.

Duke Ellington

#70. I may need to stop reading Benny's journals. That was a bit too gangster just now.

Kenya Wright

#71. Hell man, I know very well you didn't come to me only to want to become a writer, and after all what do I really know about it except that you've got to stick to it with the energy of a benny addict.

Jack Kerouac

#72. I love Benny Hill. He one of my favourites of aaall time. Like, the way Benny did it, he was just amazing. Just seeing how he put songs together and comedy and the timing and the sketches. He was way ahead of his time.

Snoop Dogg

#73. George: Why've you had a grudge against your brother for 15 years? Benny: We Lopezes are a proud people ... George: You have a birthday lunch at Denny's every month. We're not that proud!

George Lopez

#74. When Jack Benny has a party, you not only bring your own scotch, you bring your own rocks.

George Burns

#75. I started off playing the clarinet, after I was inspired by listening to my dad's Benny Goodman records.

Alvin Lee

#76. My idol was Jack Benny and he was the master of subtlety and timing.

Don Knotts

#77. For Benny and The Beauty, the sun was always shining whatever the weather, and if they hadn't been on the run from the law, they would probably have gotten married right away. Once you've reached a certain age, it is easier to sense when everything feels exactly right.

Jonas Jonasson

#78. I've always been the king of silence. I've always been a minimalist comedian. I've taken my influence from Jack Benny, who was the king of that ... I've always done 'less is more.'

Albert Brooks

#79. Therefore, it is my belief that Blind Benny, even with his poor sightless eyes, is the only person I know who can see with perfect clarity. Because Benny is able to see beyond appearances.

Ruth White

#80. Christmas Eve, 1955, Benny Profane, wearing black levis, suede jacket,
sneakers and big cowboy hat, happened to pass through Norfolk, Virginia. Given to sentimental impulses, he thought he'd look in on the Sailor's Grave, his old tin can's tavern on East Main Street.

Thomas Pynchon

#81. I bet Aaron swims the fastest," Benny said, squeezing my hand. "He's like a fish.

Anna Carey

#82. Santa knows Physics: Of all colors, Red Light penetrates fog best. That's why Benny the Blue-nosed reindeer never got the gig.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

#83. I consider you as old as you look and feel. And in that case I feel - I feel I'm about 39, like Jack Benny.

Joan Collins

#84. Would you like me to do something about that?" Matt inquired in a polite
voice, his hazel eyes sparkling, as he gazed at the tent in Benny's boxers.

"Yes, please, I'd like you to sit on it," Benny responded equally politely

Podga

#85. I always used to sit next to Mel Blanc when we'd do the shows. When you have Jack Benny on one side and Mel Blanc on the other, you're not going to go far wrong.

Harry Shearer

#86. I have often been told that I have many of the same mannerisms as Jack Benny and certainly Bob Cummings.

Dwayne Hickman

#87. Benny [Carter] opened the eyes of a lot of producers and studios, so that they could understand that you could go to blacks for other things outside of blues and barbecue. He's a total musician. He was the pioneer, he was the foundation. He made it possible for that doubt to be taken away.

Quincy Jones

#88. This was because Benny Bianchi was always going to be a promise at the same time Benny Bianchi was the prize at the end of a crazy life.

Kristen Ashley

#89. The way Benny saw it, when your first memory was of zombies killing your parents, then you had a license to hate them as much as you wanted.

Jonathan Maberry

#90. Everybody is afraid they won't have any money after they die, but Jack Benny discovered a way to take it with him. He had his appendix taken out and a piggy bank put in.

Bob Hope

#91. I knew that we'd never get there. I knew this, in the same way I knew Tati would never be a teacher, and that Benny would be the end of me. Life's about confirming what we already know. About making sure.

Nami Mun

#92. My first official consulting job, therefore, was for a scrap metal dealer (he resented the term "junk dealer") in East Edmonton named Benny Sugarman.

Preston Manning

#93. Sounded like girls. Mixed feelings on that score. He didn't despise them with the same passion he used to. In fact, Benny suspected that there would come a time in the not-too-distant future when he might develop a mysterious interest in them.

Eoin Colfer

#94. Benny Bianchi, do you think in a million years I'd do anything to jeopardize the promise of you?

Kristen Ashley

#95. When Jack Benny plays the violin, it sounds as though the strings are still in the cat.

Fred Allen

#96. When I first met Benny Goodman he wouldn't talk about anything but clarinets, mouthpieces, reeds, etc. When I tried to change the subject, he said 'But that's what we have in common. We both play clarinet.' I said, 'No, Benny, that's where we're different. You play clarinet, I play music.'

Artie Shaw

#97. When ABBA broke up, I assumed our music would fall into oblivion so in the early 90's with BJRN AGAIN becoming popular and when U2 invited Benny and I on stage to sing Dancing Queen, I just assumed we were being sent up. But now I see they were paying tribute to us

Bjorn Ulvaeus

#98. My old friend Jack Benny has only had one ball all his golfing life. And now he's lost it. The string came off!

Bob Hope

#99. Since the advent of Benny Goodman, there have been too few clarinetists to fill the void that Goodman left. Ken Peplowski is most certainly one of those few. The man is magic.

Mel Torme

#100. It was the same smile he used in bed with Crick
the gentle, sweet smile that made him look young and a little vulnerable. Crick turned the picture around, and Benny had written, I asked him to think of you.

Amy Lane