When you get big special effects pictures, sci-fi and things, there's little or no comedy. Or it's a domestic comedy and there's not one special effect. But very rarely do these things fuse and come out right.

I like people with big talents and small neuroses - not always an easy combination to find. I've discovered that if the neurosis is too big, it diminishes the talent and you wind up working too hard for what you get.

Woody Allen is a genius. His films are wonderful. He's poetic, but he's also a critic. He artfully steps back from a social setting and criticizes it without - I suspect - without letting himself be vulnerable to it.

When I'm writing a script, I don't worry about plot as much as I do about people. I get to know the main characters - what they need, what they want, what they should do. That's what gets the story going. You can't just have action, you've got to find out what the characters want. And then they must grow, they must go somewhere.

Tragedy is what happens to me; comedy is what happens to you.

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.

Immortality is a by-product of good work. Masterpieces are not for artists, they're for critics. Critics can't even make music by rubbing their back legs together. My message to the world is 'Let's swing, sing, shout, make noise! Let's not mimic death before our time comes! Let's be wet and noisy!'