Walter Matthau

I still think I'm 28. I'm 73. I think I'm 28, though, except that I won't get into a fight with anybody…

— Walter Matthau

To be successful in show business, all you need are 50 good breaks.

— Walter Matthau

I was playing Russell Long, the senator from Louisiana. I had 12 speech teachers watching me. All the other passengers on the…

— Walter Matthau

Doing a movie is like eating five hundred canapes at a cocktail party - you're never really full. You don't feel as…

— Walter Matthau

I always had one ear offstage, listening for the call from the bookie.

— Walter Matthau

Every actor looks all his life for a part that will combine his talents with his personality... 'The Odd Couple' was mine.…

— Walter Matthau

I can relate to anything. I once played Macbeth. I got a lot of laughs, so I quit.

— Walter Matthau

Sometimes it takes me six months before I find out what a line means, even if the writing is superficial... To do…

— Walter Matthau

You see, my father was a Catholic priest, Greek Orthodox, but I think he started out as a Jew, then he became…

— Walter Matthau

We're writing a book together. She just finished one. Did you read it? Among the Porcupines?

— Walter Matthau

I have more talent in my smallest fart than you have in your entire body.

— Walter Matthau

My doctor gave me six months to live, but when I couldn't pay the bill he gave me six months more.

— Walter Matthau

The first girl you go to bed with is always pretty

— Walter Matthau

When I was about eighteen, I saw myself as a rather sensitive, delicate, poetic, romantic figure. And then I got into the…

— Walter Matthau

I could play a cop, I could play a crook, I could play a lawyer, I could play a dentist, I could…

— Walter Matthau

Why don't you do the world a favour. Pull your bottom lip up over your head and swallow.

— Walter Matthau

I don't know how you can tell a good actor in the movies. I really don't. I think you simply just do…

— Walter Matthau

If you're sitting around and doing Chekhov and the cat walks in, you must pay attention to the cat. You cannot continue…

— Walter Matthau

It's very easy to live here. You're anonymous here. Nobody knows who you are.

— Walter Matthau

Working for the screen is almost like being in the Army: you set your mind to it, and you do it.

— Walter Matthau

There's no such thing as 'too late!' That's why they invented death!

— Walter Matthau

I retired once a couple of times.

— Walter Matthau

Of course I gamble, to make the games interesting. But five hundred dollars a game, tops. Or sometimes a thousand. No heart…

— Walter Matthau

I told Simon, 'I don't want to play Oscar. I want to play Felix because Oscar is too easy. He gets all…

— Walter Matthau

I wasn't handsome. I didn't have good clothes. I used to wonder why people would hire me when they could get college…

— Walter Matthau