I wasn't playing Nixon's satirical stick figure. I was playing Nixon the man. As an actor, I felt I had to get to the deeply flawed humanity of the guy.

I went to graduate school at Harvard for one year I worked in the state legislature in Sacramento for one year. I taught school in Compton for two years.

If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure?

I was a Political Science major.

I am one of those people who thrive on deadlines. Nothing brings on inspiration more readily than desperation.

To do then now would be retro. To do then then was very now-tro, if you will.

When Nixon died, on my radio show I started doing sketches with three basic conceits: One, there's a place called Heaven. Two, Nixon got in. And three, he's still taping.

The hardest work most of us do is maintaining the appearance of normality.

When it moved to Friday night it disappeared, when they find another show that can do what The Simpsons does, they will be delighted to do cancel The Simpsons.

Well I directed a few feature length things for HBO in the late eighties.

Nobody makes a movie thinking it's still going to be watched and talked about and quoted 20 years later.

Rest as if you’ll live forever

-Waiting Time is time of preparation, planning pruning before time of manifestation (time of showing forth)

True friends celebrate your success and share your grief!

It's one of the most important things in life to provide someone with a job.

The Copernican revolution brought about by Kant was, I think, the most important single turning point in the history of philosophy.

Not a moment passes these days without fresh rushes of academic lemmings off the cliffs they proclaim the political responsibilities of the critic, but eventually all this moralizing will subside.

Everything has its advantages and disadvantages.

Don't you know that everybody's got a Fairyland of their own?

Contrary to popular belief, all evolving artists are in a full time battle with mediocrity.

I have no power, and that's what's so humbling.