I'm a comedian. I make comic films and there are certain ideas that occur to me that are comic, with heavy, serious undertones. There are some ideas that are more frivolous to me. The next idea that could occur to me could be comedy about death and famine or something.

I like filming in New York a lot myself, but London is accommodating to me; the weather's very good there and the conditions for shooting and the financial conditions, the artistic conditions are good, so it's a pleasant place to shoot.

To me there’s no real difference between a fortune teller or a fortune cookie and any of the organized religions. They’re all equally valid or invalid, really. And equally helpful.

When you make the film, there's a big difference between when you're in your own home at the typewriter, and when you're standing on a mountain, or on a street corner, and buses are coming by-it's a different reality. You make a million changes that were never in the script, but that reality dictates.

If you take a frown and turn it upside down, the person you are holding by the ankles will soon pass out.

How wrong Emily Dickinson was! Hope is not "the thing with feathers." The thing with feathers has turned out to be my nephew. I must take him to a specialist in Zurich.

I was the captain of the latent paranoid softball team. We used to play all the neurotics on sunday morning. Nailbiters against the bedwetters, and if you've never seen neurotics play softball, it's really funny. I used to steal second base, and feel guilty and go back.