The more serious the situation, the funnier the comedy can be. The greatest comedy plays against the greatest tragedy. Comedy is a red rubber ball and if you throw it against a soft, funny wall, it will not come back. But if you throw it against the hard wall of ultimate reality, it will bounce back and be very lively. Very, very few people understand this.

When you come to Germany as a Jew you have an uneasy feeling, but I've always felt okay in Berlin.

I had low blood sugar, a chemical imbalance, plus the normal nervous breakdown everyone goes through from adolescence to adulthood.

I wanted to entertain so badly that I kept at it until I was good. I just browbeat my way into show business.

I was out in the combat engineers. We would throw up bridges in advance of the infantry but mainly we would just throw up.

You're young forever when you write. Alfred Hitchcock directed until the day he died. As long as you don't have any dementia or Alzheimer's, if you have your All-Bran every day and clear yourself out, I think your brains are gonna be all right.

I was born on the kitchen table. We were so poor my mother couldn't afford to have me; the lady next door gave birth to me.