Melancholy is kind of sweet sometimes, I think. It's not a negative thing. It's not a mean thing. It's just something that happens in life, like autumn.

I improvise whenever I feel it's important, or whenever I think that something's there. It's nice to have a script that's so well-written that I don't have to improvise. I mean, I used to have to re-write whole movies; this is kind of nice.

While I have felt lonely many times in my life, the oddest feeling of all was after my mother, Lucille, died. My father had already died, but I always had some attachment to our big family while she was alive. It seems strange to say now that I felt so lonely, yet I did.

It’s fun to watch someone like John Goodman, and yet it takes work. People say ‘he’s not acting, he’s being himself.’ Well it’s hard to be yourself, it’s the hardest job there is.

If I run into someone on the street, that's one thing. But answering mail for a living? I like a job where you can play and act kind of goofy and have some fun.

I'm a nut, but not just a nut.

The truth is, anybody that becomes famous is an ass for a year and a half. You've got to give them a year and a half, two years. They are getting so much smoke blown, and their whole world gets so turned upside down, their responses become distorted. I give everybody a year or two to pull it together because, when it first happens, I know how it is.