If Chevy Chase had not been an actor, he might have been a very popular guy in advertising or whatever field he would have gone into, because of his charisma.

I'm a writer-director-actor, which I've always kind of enjoyed. I compared it to the Olympic biathlon. "Not only can he cross-country ski, but he's a terrific marksman as well." I want people to say, "You mean that writer performed a tracheotomy?" That's right, I do everything.

I never read Playboy before I started working there and stopped reading it the day I quit.

Where's the great pay? Where's the travel? Where's the Winnebago, Goddamnit!

For me, most comedy scripts fail in the mechanical playing-out of the setup. They'll pay lip service to a moral lesson or a psychological progression.

You can't love somebody into a state of mental health.

The child says, "Well geesh, the institutions that I'm supposed to respect - the church and the government - they're telling me things that don't appear to be true. Either I'm crazy or they're crazy." That creates the Absurd Child. The Absurd Child is one who says, "Well, I think they're crazy." So you live in this state of alienation from your culture and your society and your family because you see this rampant bullshit around you.