Some great thoughts from Dick Van Dyke's memoir: My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business.

"I had a long-term vision in mind. One of an actor's biggest challenges, perhaps his or her most important, is choosing the right role. I knew that having a well-defined standard would ultimately help my representatives find the right materials, and if they did their jobs right, and I did mine, ultimately the material would define me in a way that would make me comfortable for the rest of my career." (p111)

"The show might have been better if we'd been of differing opinions, but I agreed with his thesis that God was not an all-powerful 'cosmic superhuman' looking down from the penthouse as much as He was Love. The bishop put it more eloquently in his book when he wrote, 'Assertions about God are in the last analysis assertions about Love.'" (p163)

"A few years ago I told Esquire magazine that the Buddhists boiled it down to the essentials. They said you need three things in life: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. The message does not get any clearer. I heard Walt Disney, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Carl Reiner all say the same thing in their own way. Hope is life's essential nutrient, and love is what gives it meaning. I think you need somebody to love and take care of, and someone who loves you back. In that sense, I think the New Testament got it right. So did the Beatles. Without love, nothing has any meaning." (p270)