When you improvise on the spot, people are very reluctant to have soft moments or quiet moments or sad moments because they're trying to fill up the spaces. So they always go towards, "How come you're late?! You're supposed to have my shirt ready! You call this a dry cleaner?!" That's what happens. That's why improvising on the spot gets very dicey.

The biggest waste of brainpower is to want to change something that's not changeable.

I don't experience basic human emotions. It's not my thing.

What naturally stops you making the film is there is no more money in the budget. That's really what it is. If you had an unlimited budget, if you were a billionaire and you financed your own movies, then you can either date, because you can sit in an editing room for six years, like Howard Hughes, and never finish anything.

When I was younger, I wasn't concentrating on good days. I was managing a career and trying to have a good year. It would always 'lead' to something, which never leads to anything except death, where everything leads to. And then as I got older, and then I had my kids and everything, I began to appreciate a great Wednesday.

I'm a member of the Academy, but I don't know who all the other Academy members are. It's not like a politician who knows who is in the Iowa caucus.

I've always been the king of silence. I've always been a minimalist comedian. I've taken my influence from Jack Benny, who was the king of that I've always done 'less is more.'