And it was a huge emotional thing to leave the law and become unemployed - to be a student again.

We were the guys on the other side. It was hilarious.

I started writing this feature comedy in New York - a Chris Farley vehicle. The script was decent. When I got to LA, I met some new friends in film school and had them read my script and give me notes.

Your relationship with an agent has got to be mutually beneficial. If you can't help their careers, then they're not going to be interested.

And it was a huge emotional thing to leave the law and become unemployed - to be a student again.

The whole idea of doing the Hollywood thing never even occurred to me. When you grow up on the East coast, Hollywood seems like this fantasy land and you don't think that people can actually make a living there.

I rewrote it and I took all your notes. Read it again, that kind of persistence paid off.

Being a lawyer in New York sucks because you're working eighty, sometimes a hundred hours a week.

A spontaneous interview feels differently than anything else you see on television.

Comedians talk to other comedians the way jazz musicians can talk to each other.

Great Canadian comics are often outsiders and insiders at the same time. That's a great perspective for a comedian.

Here's the rule that I set for myself, and I believe it - even on a show like 'Curb Your Enthusiasm': the more personal you are, the wider your audience.

I don't believe any particular ethnic group is smarter than any other group.

I don't really dissect comedy. Nothing kills off humor more than overanalyzing it.

I starred in a Broadway play that was Sidney Poitier's first directing job and the cast was Lou Gossett, Cicely Tyson, Diana Ladd and I played a Jewish kid who offered himself as a slave to two Columbia University students as reparations.

I used to have a theory actually that, if you've had a good childhood, a good marriage and a little bit of money in the bank, you're going to make a lousy comedian.

In comedy, looking back is more important than looking around at your contemporaries because they are too much influenced by the same time period as you are.

My father was a rabbi and had a little synagogue in Canada, so I'm from Canada. I left there at 16.

On 'Curb Your Enthusiasm,' it takes almost a year to get 10 shows written. It always reminds me of my old yeshiva days, where you used to sit over a piece of Talmud and analyze everything that was going on.

Silences are the most underrated part of comedy.

The interesting thing about improvisation is you're making something up in front of the audience. Now music helps you out a little bit because you have an instrument that'll separate you from the audience.

The odd thing about comedy is that the more personal you are, the larger the audience.

The one thing an audience always has in common with a comedian is troubles. The Yiddish word for that is tsuris. You're always putting your tsuris on stage whether you like it or not. No one is untroubled, unless they're just, you know, an imbecile.

The thing about stand-ups is you can't really get good unless you're failing in front of a large number of people. That makes stand-up comedy unique: you need a tremendous amount of reserve within you to take the rejection from the audience, and without it, you can't do anything.

When I started, you didn't make a lot of money by being a comedian. You didn't get a lot of respect.

When I talk to Steve Martin, he's joyful when he talks about comedy.

You don't need to be stable to be a stand-up comedian.

There is no executive order; there is no law that can require the American people to form a national community. This we must do as individuals and if we do it as individuals, there is no President of the United States who can veto that decision.

Under current law volunteers who are not working with an official nonprofit organization are not covered by the Volunteer Protection Act. Therefore, there are absolutely no legal protections for the average American who wishes to volunteer.

When law becomes despotic, morals are relaxed, and vice versa.

Every dictator is an enemy of freedom, an opponent of law.

To believe in a just law of cause and effect, carrying with it a punishment or a reward, is to believe in righteousness.

For example, UNICEF works with governments to change legislation such as in India where a law was passed raising the age of compulsory school completion to keep children in school and away from the workplace for longer.

In Hungary, acting is a career for which one fits himself as earnestly as one studies for a degree in medicine, law, or philosophy.

Working-class Americans have waited too long, close to a decade in fact, for an increase in the minimum wage. This has been the second longest period without a pay raise since the Federal minimum wage law was first enacted in 1938.

The law is immoral.

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.

No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.

There are certain promises you make that are more sacred than anything that happens in a court of law, I don't care how many Bibles you put your hand on.

Ideological warriors whether from the Left or the Right are bad news for the bench. They tend to make law, not interpret law. And that's not what any of us should want from our judges.

While I support immigration regulated through a legal framework, I do not support rewarding those who broke the law to get here.

How strange it is that murder has the sanction of law in one and only one of the human relationships, and that is the most important of all, that of nation to nation.

I was actually going to law school in 1972.

Above all, I would teach him to tell the truth Truth-telling, I have found, is the key to responsible citizenship. The thousands of criminals I have seen in 40 years of law enforcement have had one thing in common: Every single one was a liar.

We need a strong police force - the Interior Ministry of the Republic of Chechnya. We have to get rid of the traitors who have managed to penetrate into the law-enforcement department.

This is not to condone torture, which is still prohibited by the Torture Convention and federal criminal law.

He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.

There should be a law that there's a pajama day every few weeks.

Wealth often takes away chances from men as well as poverty. There is none to tell the rich to go on striving, for a rich man makes the law that hallows and hollows his own life.