The first thing you've got to do is know your craft, and then you can do something else with it.

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.

History's got no bows on it, only frayed ends of ribbons and knots that can't be untied.

The Lord’s gracious hand is upon us.We will begin the good work.

But, if there's any aspect of my career that needs attention, it's writing.

It's hard work being a person, you have to do it every single day.

The Ethical Society, therefore, is like a Church in maintaining, and emphasizing the importance of maintaining the custom of public assemblies on Sunday.

There is at bottom only one genuinely scientific treatment for all diseases, and that is to stimulate the phagocytes.

I think some people, when they get a certain ego, they lose sense of whatever.

I was in jail four and a half years. When I came out, I continued the same struggle against injustice, but instead of using weapons, I began to use art and cinema.

In the last few years I've been listening to jazz more than anything else. I listen to a lot of world music and experimental here and there.

The contents of the glass don’t matter; what’s more important is to realize there’s a pitcher of water nearby. In other words, we have the capacity to refill the glass, or to change our outlook.