It's a great luxury for me to be able to write on the films that I direct, and kind of a nice thing to be able to write enough to get credit, which is difficult for a director.

Nothing reinforces a professional relationship more than enjoying success with someone.

Find the most talented person in the room and if it's not you, go stand next to him. Hang out with him. try to be helpful.

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.

It doesn't take any longer to improvise 10 takes than it takes to shoot 10 takes of the same thing. It turns out to be just as responsible from a business point of view as anything else.

A friend of mine is trying to do a documentary where he brings Jewish and Arab comedians to occupied territories in Israel. He wants to do shows as a way of finding some comedic common denominator. When he proposed the idea to one of the officials at the Jenin refuge camp, the guy just stared at him and said, "This is not a joke to us. We don't think that laughing is the answer."

I never work just to work. It's some combination of laziness and self-respect.