I learned a few things on my own since, and modified some of the things he taught me, but everything, unequivocally, that I learned about comedy writing I learned from Danny Simon.

If you pursue the other woman, it's a losing situation and it's not good for your relationship or your marriage. If your marriage is open and you're allowed to, that's no good either. There's no way, really in the end, to be happy unless you get very lucky.

Life is for the living.

I think Hollywood has gone in a disastrous path. It's terrible. The years of cinema that were great were the '30s, '40s, not so much the '50s...but then the foreign films took over and it was a great age of cinema as American directors were influenced by them and that fueled the '50s and '60s and '70s.

I took a puff of the wrong cigarette at a fraternity dance once, and the cops had to get me, y'know. I broke two teeth trying to give a hickie to the Statue of Liberty.

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.

I tended to place my wife under a pedestal.