Will we allow the decline of our language-the language of Shakespeare, Shaw and Steinbeck? Will we abuse our precious gift of communication? Will we bite our mother tongue with the teeth of indifference, crushing the taste buds of clarity and, without prompt application of the antiseptic of education, causing the gangrene of strained metaphors? Stand up, America, and let me hear your answer: Ain't no way, dude!

Take off all your clothes and walk down the street waving a machete and firing an Uzi, and terrified citizens will phone the police and report, There's a naked person outside!

I have never understood people dividing things into dramas and comedies.

Directing is mystifying. It's a long, long, skid on an icy road, and you do the best you can trying to stay on the road... If you're still here when you come out of the spin, it's a relief. But you've got to have the terror if you're going to do anything worthwhile.

Yes. The whole point about laughter is it's like mercury: you can't catch it, you can't catch what motivates it - that's why it's funny.

There’s nothing better than discovering, to your own astonishment, what you’re meant to do. It’s like falling in love.

That seems to me the greatest American danger we're all in, that we'll bargain away the experience of being alive for the appearance of it.