What makes me laugh? Richard Nixon always made me laugh.

What makes me laugh? Richard Nixon always made me laugh.

Generally with the Oscars or the Emmys there isn't much you can do until the nominations are announced. Then you know what kind of year you're dealing with - what's been overlooked, what the issues are.

They make a humongous profit, but the people that work on the shows don't get paid a lot because they're working on the Oscars show. It's the biggest show in the world.

Eddie Izzard is absolutely brilliant. I would love to write something for him.

It's the biggest party in the world, and you have to keep the whole thing percolating, which is difficult because a lot of awards most people don't care about.

I mean, I've sold all these scripts and nothing's been made. Studios have closed, stars have died. I had a director find Jesus. And the pictures just don't get made.

I write screenplays that don't get made and pilots that don't get picked up, and I re-write other people's movies, and those are all different kinds of fees.

I do a lot of screen re-writing.

It's really live television, the way God meant it to be.

I mean, when I started out I was billing per hour, like a shrink because you would sit with somebody and work. But most of it, if it's for a live show it's usually a buy-out. A flat fee.

I've written about 15 screenplays and they all sold - they were all sold on pitches.

As I'm always fond of telling hosts at the Oscars who are doing it for their first time, for everybody who wins, there are four people who don't. As the evening wears on, the room fills up with losers, and then they are bitter.

Every single line on the Oscar show is negotiated. Unless you've been there, you have no idea how it is put together. It's like nothing else on earth. I'm writing a book about it, but I have to throw in my sexual escapades to make sure it sells.

For years, I was compared to Wookiees, especially after I did the 'Star Wars Holiday Special.' I have some photos of me with a few of the Wookiees on the set, and it's hard to tell us apart.

I have one rave 'New York Times' review framed next to a flop 'Los Angeles Times' review. And it's for the same show. These people watched the same show. That's what happens. They love it, they hate it.

I think I intimidate hecklers because I weigh more than most of them.

I've got more chins than a San Francisco phonebook.

I've learned that most of gay America is coupled up, or looking to be. No wonder gay marriage has such traction. So many of us are already in it, so of course we want the legal benefits.

Musicals have clearly gotten more physical. You never saw Ethel Merman doing step aerobics.

My assistant says I'm an eBay auction waiting to happen. I have a very large collection of T-shirts... about 4,000 now. Maybe I'll pillage it someday. I have resisted the offers to do a line of T-shirts.

My skirt fell off on stage during a performance of Hairspray on Broadway, revealing my fat suit over my own natural fat suit. I turned to the audience and said, 'Now you know why I spent six years in a square.'

Of course I adored and wanted to be Catwoman. That goes without saying.

The Oscars are about the dynamics of that moment, of that season. It reflects what's been going on in the world every year through the movies. And a lot of times, what's popular at the movies is popular because of what's going on in the world at that moment.

When AIDS hit, lots of people banded together to take care of each other and do what the government wasn't doing. When you grow up Jewish, as I have, you learn that everybody hates you, no one's going to help you, and you have to take care of yourself. That's a great maxim to the gay community, and we took it to heart; we took care of our own.

Who knew we had all this O.C.D. in the world? Well actually, I suppose it's pretty obvious. It explains Sudoku, doesn't it?

I sometimes lie awake at night trying to think of something funny that Richard Nixon said.

And I also thought that Richard Nixon was the greatest political education we have ever had, but it looks like we need to relearn them again.

What makes me laugh? Richard Nixon always made me laugh.

It was accountability that Nixon feared.

I sent my flowers across the hall to Mrs Nixon but her husband remembered what a Democrat I am and sent them back.

Now I start my diary of my personal plot to kill by pistol either Richard Nixon or George Wallace.

I thought Nixon was the worst President we had ever had, save only perhaps Andrew Johnson.

The fact of the Watergate cover-up is not nearly as interesting as the step into making the cover-up. And when you understand the step, you understand that Richard Nixon lied. That he was a criminal.

The trouble with Nixon is that he's a serious politics junkie. He's totally hooked and like any other junkie, he's a bummer to have around, especially as President.

Nixon had some large achievements in foreign affairs. They will be remembered. But a president probably gets remembered for one thing, and Watergate will head the Nixon list, I suspect.

He and Reagan were not at all alike, because Reagan is an optimist and Dick Nixon wasn't. Yet in some ways they were alike. Neither really liked to talk on the telephone, for instance. And, in a lot of respects, both of them were very much loners.

Even now there is no evidence that anyone involved in the Nixon operation was going to threaten us.

The Nixon administration kept a nasty eye on our show... Cops would come by - often just in time to see the act they wanted to see.

While he was president, it was popular to be a Nixon hater.

I'd walk over my own grandmother to re-elect Richard Nixon.

The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that is why we didn't make it.

The old Court you and I served so long will not be worthy of its traditions if Nixon can twist, turn and fashion If Nixon gets away with that, then Nixon makes the law as he goes along - not the Congress nor the courts.

The number of illegal activities were so large that one was bound to come out and lead to the uncovering of the others. Nixon was too willing to use the power of government to settle scores and get even with enemies.

I wrote that letter, and the one to Nixon. And I wrote more letters, and I thought it might be a magazine article. At that time I sent it to Esquire and Playboy, but anyway, I kept writing, and all of sudden I had enough and thought, well maybe it is a book.

Nixon is one of the few in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and lying out of both sides.

Richard Nixon is a no good, lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he'd lie just to keep his hand in.

It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.

In many ways when Jerry Ford pardoned Nixon, in a certain way, he did speak for the country.