At boarding school you had to wear your name across your chest and your back, and obviously I had a pretty funny name. It wasn't Brown or Smith or Hughes.

Once, the parental bed collapsed because all the children sat on it at once.

Blank House was exactly a nice empty sheet where nothing was accountable because you were so naughty that you were in Blank House.

If you were in the film industry at that time, you were always picked up by directors who were much older. You were whisked about and shown things. I did work very hard though.

I had a quick ear and could pick up languages.

I don't think in my family anyone looked after anyone. It didn't matter how old they were.

If there was a distraction I'd get up and jump out the window. I was quite out of hand. In schools like that I don't think they expect that girls are going to behave in such an outrageous fashion.

I was a hard worker, and I always knew my lines.

Suddenly I had a contract and I was earning lots of money.

Both my parents were doctors, and my mother had her surgery in the house. There were six children.

The most surprising thing for my mother and father was when I was actually earning more money than them by the time I was about 18. They thought I was going to be the ne'er do well, who they'd have to keep worrying about.

Very quickly, without really looking back or trying, I was just suddenly lifted into another sphere.

The best part of learning any profession, when you're really going through those huge stretching escalated times of learning and energy, is when you want to do it so much.

My father said, If you want to do acting, you have to be successful, which is a silly thing to say.

I had a place in England and was commuting from England to Australia, which is pretty stupid, but after two years I sort of knew what I wanted to do, more or less.

I never used to sleep much. I think we all go through a bit of a time like that where we rage about. If we don't, I don't think you've ever really lived.

You never came home for lunch: you just stayed doing, playing, having fun, surfing, running round.

I didn't know what to do with myself. I wasn't excited by the teaching of the school. If they'd been intent on really teaching you things, I would have been a little more attentive.

I sort of was good at writing essays. I was never very good at mathematics, and I was never very good at algebra. I loved science, but I wasn't sure of it.

I was often very, incredibly naughty, and if I didn't come home at tea time I used to be sent to bed without any dinner. But people used to bring me things: I was better fed in bed.

I got through my teen years by being a bit of a clown.

I learnt the theory of movement, which I still teach sometimes. I was very, very ambitious to learn a skill.

I spoke French a bit, and I could speak a bit of this and that, and when you were taught those things by people who couldn't really do it, you can do some pretty wonderfully, imaginative horrific things to teachers.

At boarding school you had to wear your name across your chest and your back, and obviously I had a pretty funny name. It wasn't Brown or Smith or Hughes.

When I did Taming of the Shrew, I was very tired, and I decided to have a holiday and make a documentary.

My mother felt it was time that I had some parental control, so I went off to America and went to New York.

If you've got a lot of children, I think you let the other children bring them up more and you just sort of step in and do stuff like every now and again.

It was a very odd household, because the grandmothers were so different. Both of them had their own pianos. So it would be duelling pianos by grandmothers.

It's funny, 'cause it seems like just yesterday that I was the youngest player just starting out. But now there are young players all over the league, and they'll ask me questions about playing overseas or finding an agent.

When Frank the Pug is singing I Will Survive, the only reason it's funny is that Will is in that shot trying not to get angry. A shot of a dog singing I Will Survive on its own will not get a laugh.

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

Robert Altman's Nashville is my all-time favorite film because it covers all the bases - it's original, moving, and has something to say, but also funny and incredibly entertaining.

You amaze me. You're 229 years old and that's what you think is funny.

You have to understand the tone of the movie, because if it's supposed to be funny, it can be funny violent like the Home Alone stuff, but you have to really understand the tone of what you're doing and make the action work for that and for the character.

It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realise the basic principle of physics, that action and reaction are equal and opposite, that when you persecute people you always rouse them to be strong and stronger.

Half of the great comedians I've had in my shows and that I paid a lot of money to and who made my customers shriek were not only not funny to me, but I couldn't understand why they were funny to anybody.

There's a constant flow of child actors. It's kind of funny to watch the new crew come through. I think, You poor little things. You're going to have to struggle for a long time.

For sheer sexiness, a man must be beautiful. Funny. yes. Clever, no.

I don't think there has been any increase in sophistication in the audience. When people are aware of a concept that's easy to understand, and there's an actor who will attract them to the theater and it's a movie that's funny three-quarters of the time, it will be successful.

Books are funny little portable pieces of thought.

I had an idea of what I thought was funny. It's kind of based on how I am.

So while it is true that I find really dark stuff funny sometimes, it's also true that as a writer of books I want to have the whole range of human emotions.

When we criticize in Iran the actions of the government, the fundamentalists say that we and the Bush Administration are in the same camp. The funny thing is that human rights activists and Mr. Bush can never be situated in the same group.

So to me, Texas Hold 'em puts me to sleep. At least when you play stud, you can be funny as you deal. Somebody some day is going to come up with a Stud show that's going to work.

Great, big, serious novels always get awards. If it's a battle between a great, big, serious novel and a funny novel, the funny novel is doomed.

Baldwin is sort of getting to be a bit funny. I don't know what happened, but a few years ago they suddenly went bankrupt and Gibson bought the whole outfit. Since then they haven't seemed to be doing an awfully good job of providing pianos.

It's funny how sometimes how the public some people think I was born like this. That I maybe I sleep and I do big muscle, but its a lot of work to look like this and to be in this kind of condition.

I think back to some of the things Harry said and some of the things I said trying to be funny. If I said them now, it would be on the front page of every newspaper in the country.

Shirley MacLaine said, You're so funny, then gave me a hug. Everything went white. I couldn't hear, I couldn't see. I thought I was going to pass out.