I just like making people laugh, and buried in that I like to bring up topics and start discussions.

Acceptance is going to a restaurant where the salad's not great, but the steak is fine.

I've always been in the middle of making my own movies, so taking acting jobs that take me away from that has been impossible.

If you look at the best-seller list for American fiction, they're all sequels to detective stories or stories about hunting serial killers. That's what's called American fiction these days.

You know, I became a director out of necessity. I was writing comedies, and I couldn't find anybody to deliver it correctly.

In the course of my movies, the financing and the releasing were always the tough part. Because I loved the creative, I loved the writing, I loved the making of it. Because I guess, I never had the giant blockbuster, I never got that sort of ease for the next one. So the next one was always, "how am I going to do this?" And that thing was sort of always the thing that made me a little chickenshit to go into the next one. The writing of it was great and the making of it was great, but how am I going to release this thing and am I going to find a studio?

Even though my father was a radio comedian, it wasn't cool to say, at a young age, 'I want to be a comedian.'