Some people are funny, and some people are not funny. Many people who are not funny can make a living at it. You don't have to be great to make a living at it. Just like a doctor who doesn't have to be great can still make a living out of it.

I think universal harmony is a pipedream and it may be more productive to focus on more modest goals, like a ban on yodeling.

I always feel the cynicism is reality with maybe an alternate spelling or something because I feel that I have real perspective on this particular issue of punishment in society.

I'm really impotent against the overwhelming bleakness of the universe and the only thing I can do is my little gift [filmmaking] and do it the best I can, [...] which is cold comfort.

There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life - full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly.

You can be with your wife, very happily married, and then you meet some woman and you love her. But you love your wife, too. And you also love that one. Or if she's met some man and she loves the man and she loves you. And then you meet somebody else and now there are three of you. Why only one person?

Eighty percent of success is showing up.