The Simpsons will end as soon as Fox is able to find an 8 p.m. comedy hit to replace it - so I give us another 50 years.

Nixon's genius was that he was able to portray himself as the toughest of the anti-communists, and yet run on a platform that he had a plan to end the Vietnam War. And, of course, his plan was to prolong it until his second election - but he didn't tell us that then.

I happened upon a memoir by a midlevel White House staffer, and he had been in the room that [Nixon's last] night [in office]. This guy's memoir told me what Nixon's last words were. And they were, on August 8, 1974, to the crew: "Have a Merry Christmas, fellas!" That was just so bizarre.

Music can happen with equal ease as a solo or collaborative venture, it seems to me.

Sometimes, songs spill out of you very fast, and sometimes you have to wrangle them to the floor. But the same thing is true of comedy, where sometimes it really flows.

I went to graduate school at Harvard for one year I worked in the state legislature in Sacramento for one year. I taught school in Compton for two years.

Nobody makes a movie thinking it's still going to be watched and talked about and quoted 20 years later.