Robin Quotes

“And when he was gone, we all wished we’d had him just a little bit longer.”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you lived here. This is to have succeeded.”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“I used to think the worst thing in life is ending up all alone. It isn’t. The worst thing in life is ending up with people that make you feel all alone.”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“His list of fears consisted of a single entry: “Everything,” he said.”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“He reminded me of Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince: wistfully surveying a world to which he felt he didn’t quite belong.”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“The attic was the playground of his mind, where he could stretch his imagination to its maximum dimensions. It was his sanctuary from the world and his vantage point above it—a place where he could observe and absorb it all, at a height where nobody could touch him.”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“What drives you to perform is the need for that primal connection,” he later explained. “My mother was funny with me, and I started to be charming and funny for her, and I learned that by being entertaining, you make a connection with another person.”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“From me to you. You got to be crazy. You know what I’m talking about? Full goose bozo. ’Cause what is reality? You got to be crazy. You got to! ’Cause madness is the only way I’ve stayed alive. Used to be a comedian. Used to, a long time ago. It’s true. You got to go full-tilt bozo. ’Cause you’re only given a little spark of madness. If you lose that, you’re nothing. Don’t. From me to you. Don’t ever lose that, because it keeps you alive. Because if you lose that, pfft. That’s my only love. Crazy.”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“Robin Williams was once in a lifetime, and his lifetime was now very much over”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“when he was gone, we all wished we’d had him just a little bit longer.”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“It was how Robin had been taught to live since childhood: nothing is permanent, transition is constant. Anywhere can be home and anyone can be family, and you can always start over again in new places, with new people. Though it might seem a strange, even insensitive attitude to some, it reflected the essential way Robin saw the world. Reality was a medium that he could shape and manipulate, not some fixed and rigid thing; the temperament that made him spontaneous and capable of astonishing comic insigh also made him unconcerned with traditional boundaries and accepted norms [..] Robin was a genius, and genius doesn't produce normal men next door who are good family men and look after their wives and children. Genius requires its own way of looking at and living in the world, and it isn't always compatible with conventional ways of living.”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“his true gift was not necessarily in being purely spontaneous but in creating the appearance of spontaneity.”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“Night”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“No one knows quite how to describe what they have just seen, and the precise words will elude them for months to come. Sure, it was a comedy routine,”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“PROLOGUE”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“These are culturally adventurous people in a freethinking city that has lately exploded”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“In the summer of 1968, as Rob and Laurie Williams were nearing the end of their cross-country car ride to California—they were still, after all, an automobile family—their seventeen-year-old son looked out the window to behold something he had never seen before, and it terrified him. A gray mist was tumbling down the hills and across the San Francisco Bay, and it was coming directly for his parents and him. It was only fog, but to his inexperienced eyes, Robin was certain it was poison gas. “It scared the piss out of me,” he said later.”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“More pointedly, she added, “When two people are harmful and wrong for each other, they do not belong together.”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“which is used to control seizures, and propranolol, a beta-blocker.”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“glomming”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“nascent”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“patois”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“He was so good that he could just phone it in, and the audience bought it,” said Storm, who eventually confronted Robin about his out-of-control conduct. “I said to him, ‘You know you’re not working at 100 percent, Robin. You’re probably at 75 percent. But I know you, and I know what you can do. You’re not really working full-out, and consequently the show becomes mediocre, and my work becomes mediocre.’ So I said to him, ‘Either you start to give 100 percent or I’m out of here. I don’t want to be around someone who’s not working full-blast.”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“He could only speculate as to why he was more receptive and sentimental in his postsurgical state. "I think, literally, because you ahve cracked the chest," he said, explaining that men, in particular, clad themselves in a layer of armor, bot once it is pierced - here he mimed his rib cage being broken open - "It's like, "Babies! my babies!" You are vulnerable, totally, for the first time since birth. You're heavily medicated and the only thing you're missing is a tit.”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“It's pretty scary to think about," Armstrong said, "that you've got a bad valve, you're out on a ride and anything can happen out there. You wait a day or two and you come across that really stressful moment, either physically or emotionally, or a combination of all that, and it's over. You literally fall down, and if you're not around someone who can help, you're done. And that is a very profound thing to think about and it changes you.”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“for perhaps the first time in his life, that he had the ability to choose his own path.”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“I know why the show’s shaky,” the script had him say at the outset. “It’s my fault. I speak too fast and they can’t understand me. I should talk more like you—like a Walkman with dead batteries.”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“Pam Dawber understood that her responsibility was to play the straight woman, a cheerful, smiling springboard for Robin to bounce off of. And she was happy to do it for Robin, she said, because he never behaved arrogantly toward her and they genuinely got along. “It was the greatest acting class I’d ever had,” she said. “Because, lucky for me, Robin was such a nice person. He had such a gigantic heart. And I really loved Robin, and Robin really loved me. We just clicked.”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“For that moment,” Crystal said, “there was no war in Iraq or Afghanistan. There were no terrorist threats. There was no trouble in the world, except that Robin had died. Every paper, everywhere, the front page. He was a joyous spirit that people loved and trusted. It didn’t make sense.”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin

“His car had handicap plates. He once parked in a blue lane and a woman approached him and said, “You don’t look handicapped to me.” Jonathan said, “Madam, can you see inside my mind?”
― Dave Itzkoff, Robin