In every generation there are a few people who are authentically funny. The cosmetics change. You may not be able to articulate it, and you may laugh at them and get a certain amount of enjoyment. But when you're asleep at night, and you wake up at 3 in the morning, and you're alone in your bed, you know who's really funny.

I don't get depressed; I grow a tumor instead.

Where I grew up in Brooklyn, nobody committed suicide. Everyone was too unhappy.

I read in self-defense.

You will notice that what we are aiming at when we fall in love is a very strange paradox. The paradox consists of the fact that, when we fall in love, we are seeking to re-find all or some of the people to whom we were attached as children. On the other hand, we ask our beloved to correct all of the wrongs that these early parents or siblings inflicted upon us. So that love contains in it the contradiction: The attempt to return to the past and the attempt to undo the past.

I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead - not sick, not wounded - dead.

I've always had an easy time directing actors because I always hire ones that are great before I get my hands on them.