If I have one vanity wish, it would be to direct. It's the only thing I haven't done yet that I would like to.

I tried for a while to be an agricultural worker and was hopelessly bored. To me it was meaningless. I would stand around in heaps of manure and sings about the beauty of the work I wasn't doing.

I am filled with awe that filmmakers have the capacity to stir us and give us back a sense of wonder.

Although I am deeply grateful to a great many people, I forgo the temptation of naming them for fear that I might slight any by omission.

On the stage you're there, it's live. There's a beginning, a middle, an end. When something is funny you hear it right away.

But, when I toil in the field of Jewish culture which I frequently do, I am indeed a Jewish artist.

You always draw on your experiences with live audiences to know how to do comedy on films. You're working for a laugh that may or may not come six months later, but you're working in a vacuum at the time you are doing it.