The thing is to be brave and move the audience with you, instead of cater to the lowest common denominator, you know, slipping on a banana peel and falling on your ass. You got to move the audience a little further ahead in terms of their appreciation of what is comedy. It's complicated.

I always thought it was great to be able to make people feel better. It was a little like being God.

The egg cream is psychologically the opposite of circumcision--it pleasurably reaffirms your Jewishness.

I was a soldier in WWII. The last couple of months of the war I was actually in combat.

It would be hypocritical of me to take issue with anything in questionable taste, seeing that I invented bad taste in films.

When we got to our hotel rooms, mosquitoes as big as George Foreman were waiting for us. They were sitting in armchairs with their legs crossed.

A cinema villain essentially needs a moustache so he can twiddle with it gleefully as he cooks up his next nasty plan.