Woody makes a movie as if he were lighting 10,000 safety matches to illuminate a city. Each one is a little epiphany: topical, ethnic, or political.

Actors fall into this trap if they missed being loved for who they really were and not for what they could do - sing, dance, joke about - then they take that as love.

My basic mistake in 'The World's Greatest Lover' was that I made the leading character a neurotic kook and sent him to Hollywood. I should have made him a perfectly normal, sane, ordinary person, and sent him to Hollywood. The audience identifies with the lead character.

I met Richard Pryor for the first time in Calgary, in Canada. A very quiet, modest meeting.

Zero Mostel wasn't afraid of authority in any form, and that's the part that influenced me the most.

[Gilda Radner] died in '89, and I got non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2000. I've just passed the five-year mark and I'm now what you call - well, it's called complete remission, but I'm cured. I'm fine.

Little surprises around every corner, but nothing dangerous.