"The key ingredient is giving the audience what they expected to get. If I'm there to escape, let me escape. If I'm there to be taught, teach me. But, don't suck me in, thinking I'm going to escape and then teach me. You've caught me off guard. You'd say, 'I've been had,' and you'd leave."
"When we did our first show, people showed up in business suits and dresses, nice looking people in the studio audience. By about the second week or so, a woman showed up with a sign. One side said, 'roses are red, violets are blue, I came here to deal with you' I stopped, read the poem, and picked her. The next week, everybody had a sign. Then somebody else had a funny hat, then came costumes...."
"I'd like to be remembered as Betty, their good friend that they invite into their home."
"The producer has to convince people of the basic sports theory that sometimes you've got to work with people; you don't have to go to lunch with them."
"'The Cosby Show' was the first time on television you saw a black family where the humor was not predicated upon how hard it is to be black in America, or black affectations and black slang. Bill Cosby said the humor is in the truth. When you play the truth of the moment you'll find the humor. That way you can make anything funny."