I became a professional actor in Detroit and I was able to earn some money. It was a good job because it permitted me to study. It fit perfectly with school.

If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

The difference - the fundamental difference between theater acting and film acting is that film acting is disjunctive.

I think that anybody's craft is fascinating. A taxi driver talking about taxi driving is going to be very, very interesting.

When you're talking about the thing that is most important to someone, they're liable to feel something strong.

Comedians don't laugh. They're too busy analyzing why it's funny or not.

I must confess that when I'm alone in my study, here in New York, writing; that's when I'm happy.

There's only one man I've called a coward, and that's Brian Doyle-Murray.

A good day's writing, when I turn off my computer after I know that I've written okay, or as well as I can write, that's a day well spent.

Our language, one of our most precious natural resources, deserves at least as much protection as our woodlands, streams and whooping cranes.

The definition of genius, really, should be that that person can do what the rest of us have to learn how to do.

I put tape on the mirrors in my house so I don't accidentally walk through into another dimension.

He saw that it was an ironical thing for him to be running thus toward that which he had been at such pains to avoid.

Variety is the soul of pleasure.

My humor was kind of from my dad and all the stuff that we went through, which was a lot of death. My humor was an escape.

It is more dangerous to be a great prophet or poet than to promote twenty companies for swindling simple folk out of their savings.

Memory, wit, fancy, acuteness, cannot grow young again in old age, but the heart can.

Thou fail to perceive mineself!

My dad had even hired an accompanist to play for me on a piano. But he had never pushed me to music because I don't think he wanted me to be hurt as much as he was if it didn't work.

Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.

Who today is willing to say that Texas and California and the remainder of the Southwest would be better off if they were governed by Mexico?