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

American sex is generally straight. It happens at 11 o'clock Saturday night. In the rural areas, it happens at nine and it happens pretty fast. Got to get up the next morning, especially if there're kids. Can't make noise, either, wake the kids.

Directing is a terrible, anxious process. It's all collaboration, and if you have a dream, it's diluted very quickly by the slightest ineptness in any of your collaborators. They're supposed to help you, but too often they help you into your grave.

I love spaghetti and sex, sometimes together. My dream of heaven is walking naked through fields of pasta fazool.

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.

The final test of fame is to have a crazy person imagine he is you.

I'm always stunned when I find out people like Roosevelt and Tolstoy weren't Jewish. How could I love them so much?