When you please your mother by doing something, it gives you confidence that you can please other people.

I came home [after funerals] and I thought if I go back to California, where I had a small house, I don't think I'll ever come east again. So I decided to stay and go through the halls and stairways, talk to Gilda Radner, holler, express some of my anger and make sure there were no ghosts in the hallways that I should ever be afraid of.And then I found out - it sounds strange, but I found out she had left me the house. We never talked about her dying and what she was going to leave me or I would ever leave her. We just didn't talk about those things.

So my idea of neurotic is spending too much time trying to correct a wrong. When I feel that I'm doing that, then I snap out of it.

If the physical thing you're doing is funny, you don't have to act funny while doing it...Just be real and it will be funnier

I love acting, especially if it's a fantasy of some kind, where it's not just realistic, it's not naturalism.

You say the character [of Leo Bloom] was meek and insecure, and you could've been describing me as well. I was a very shy person in those days, and working with Zero [Mostel], who was bigger than life, helped me grow. Zero was a strong influence on me.

I never used to believe in fate. I used to think you make your own life and then you call it fate. That's why I call it irony.