- Whatever you want to do, do it now. There are only so many tomorrows.
- I was grown before I realized that other mothers didn't put their heads in the oven.
- I felt my father's presence with me, enlightening my memories, helping me to commit to paper the feelings I had. I really heard my father speaking to me from the other dimension, filling my mind with just the right words. The story came so fast and was so right. In three days, the script was complete.
- I want people to laugh and cry, not just sit and stare at the television. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I think viewers are hungry for shows in which people say something meaningful.
- [on his illness] Well, the news shocked the hell out of me. Nothing was further from my mind, since I'm only 54 and, with rare exceptions, I'd been healthy my whole life. Not that I don't deserve to have a cancer. I'm a good athlete and I work out hard--before this happened I could bench press 300, 350 pounds, no sweat --but I've abused my body over the years. I don't want people to think that everybody is a likely candidate for cancer of this type. I think I have it because for most of my life, though I was never a drunk, I drank too much. I also smoked too many cigarettes and ate a lot of wrong things. And if you do that, even if you think you're too strong to get anything, somehow you're going to pay.
- [on being so popular on television] Boy, you gotta be real sick to get this much attention.
- [during his last days] I don't mind dying if I have to, but I'm damned if I want to pay for the guarantee. I'm sorry.
- [on his physical technique] I didn't have the right look. Back then actors were big, muscular, terrific! And I was still 125 pounds and the 5'11" I'd always be.
- [on the cancellation of Little House on the Prairie (1974)] I wanted to destroy the entire town, which I did. Everybody needed the catharsis on that show. We were together for nine years, and that's why we blew it up. That, plus the fact I didn't want anybody making a trashy movie at Walnut Grove, because I like that town.
- [In 1974] Yes I am perfect. It's a problem I've had all my life.
- [In 1991] If I'm gonna die, death's gonna have to do a lot of fighting to get me.
- I never felt I was going to make it as an actor because to me actors were tall and handsome and had great voices.
- [about Little House on the Prairie (1974), where he had a voice in matters of the series' policy] We're trying to stick close to the true story. The problem is the books were short and over four years--I think we can run four years--we'll need more than 100 stories. So, we have to invite some.
- We each have our own miracles. I'm still hoping to beat it.
- [on the differences between his Little House on the Prairie (1974) Charles Ingalls character and himself] Ingalls had a beard in real life, but I don't. The problem is that I can't grow a beard--it just looks like stubble. I wasn't going to play the part for six months with a beard glued to my face so I decided to play him clean-shaven.
- [in 1980 about Pernell Roberts's departure from Bonanza (1959) Pernell didn't like the show and would let you know it, but he rarely cared to do much about improving it. To say a show stinks doesn't make it better. After he left, we took one leaf out of the dining room table and we all made more money because we split the take three ways instead of four.
- [In 1979: People would do themselves a great favor if they would take the blame for things that go wrong, and say to themselves, "I've got to do something about this." But you can't do anything if you always blame your problems on someone else. You have to say, "It's my fault, and I'd better do something about this.".
- [pn directing Bonanza (1959)] When I direct, I try to work with a minimum number of set-ups [individual scenes] possible so we have time to do certain shots you usually don't have a chance to do. In the first day of this show, for example, instead of having 15 set-ups, as is normal, we had only three in the can by noon. But they were intricate shots, and this technique pays off in the long run.
- I feel sorry for people who have problems which are beyond their control, but most of life's problems are our own fault--and sympathy under those conditions doesn't do a bit of good.
- [In 1976] The very worst thing you can do to a man is to make him think he is a coward. If a guy needs his job in order to feed and clothe his kids, he'll put up with a lot of abuse before he fights back. I have seen many men mentally shattered by some big-mouth who screamed and yelled in order to get his way. Most of those men did not deserve the abuse but they had to have their jobs, so they kept their mouths shut - and that made them feel like cowards.
- [on blaming one's boss] When a man knows he's being wronged and that he should yell right back at his boss, but is afraid to because he fears being fired, then he had just convinced himself that he's a coward and that is one of the worst things you can do to a person. I don't blame a man for keeping his mouth shut in circumstances like that, but he will blame himself, and that is horrible.
- [on his messy divorce from his second wife] The relationship lasted 19 years. I don't consider that a failed marriage. I don't think it was a disaster. We produced some terrific kids. We just didn't grow in the same direction. We became different people. We both changed. To stay with someone when you no longer have anything in common is the cruelest thing to do to a child. It's much better to divorce and have two parents happy. I don't know if Charles Ingalls would have stayed married to Caroline as long as he did, except that it was a long way to the next house in those days. I was not an aging lecher looking for a fresh young thing. You don't dissolve a relationship to go to bed with someone 20 years younger. You have to have major differences to stop a relationship, after as many years as I was married. With a wife and seven children, there's always a problem. Lynn and I fought a lot, about jealousy, about my being tied up with my work. I'd go into depressed moods, and then I'd go around screaming at people at home and in the studio - and at everyone in sight. Banging down phones, swearing and yelling. But I figure if you don't have these kind of problems, life would just come up with some other unpleasantries for you. Nobody's perfect. Not Charles Ingalls. Not Michael Landon.
- I came home and found my 12-year-old daughter devouring the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. Then I discovered that my wife had devoured them too when she was a girl, and was reading them again. So I went to NBC and told them "Little House" was it.
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