I'm very bad with improvisation. I hate it.

Comedy is the result of what's happening, not what people are doing. Because if people are doing comedy. It's embarrassing. The individual elements have to be straight-faced, serious, realistic with a firm basis. What makes it comedy is a somewhat shifted way to put it together.

I think Stephen Sondheim is a - and I hardly ever use this word - but this is as close as it gets to a genius.

I go with the most interesting thing that comes my way,I don't expect it to come from India to tell you the truth, but if it did, fine by me.

There is quite an important director in Germany who I think in the early fifties over here, and then went back, and he said something that's absolutely true. And it's more important to repeat that today than it ever was. Not for you, but for us over there it is important. He said, 'In America they make movies like art, and sell it like commodities. We make make movies like commodities and sell them like art.'

One does not contradict the other.Straight-faced is the basis of all decent comedy.

I don't say things straight into the other person's face. I kind of like to make a joke or a remark and make it digestible or just give a little comment that voices my concern, but is not meant to be a critique, but just a comment so that he understands that I am thinking.