All you're trying to do in an improvisation is get as much material as possible for the editing room.

All these things that enter your head are assignments. You write them up and then throw them out there and if someone wants to do it, your assignment is done.

I have a kind of objective luxury about my career.

What I learned, a little too late, was that the 'traditional' Martin Short target viewer weighs under 300 pounds. Unfortunately, I was on during daytime.

Sometimes people get passionate about the obscure jokes.

People do think I'm Jewish. But we're Irish Catholic. My father had a brogue.

I've chosen to treat my life more like a party than something to stress about.

What's great about being a character actor is you know that you can survive forever. It's not about the gloss of your eyebrows.

I've never done an improvised movie as a fictitious character. I think that's the challenge.

My mother was the concert master of the symphony. Absurdity and eccentricity were not criticized.

Being the youngest of five, you're adored, you're fueled with confidence.

No one is any one thing.

One of my great influences was Don Knotts as Barney Fife.

You go through publicists because it's easy for a publicist to say to another publicist, "No".

I have sometimes imagined my own death and brought myself to tears.

I've done lots of improv things but not a whole movie.

I think I'm funny because my family, my siblings were funny.

I hate to lull the audience into letting them think that something is something. It's always fun to defy expectations.

David Lynch and I almost made a movie together in the late '80s. We had lots of dinners and lunches. He's a very cool, hip guy. This film, let's face it, is like an homage to him, I would imagine he'd find it funny.

Someone once asked me what was the weirdest question I was ever asked. And I was stymied.

I think loss can fuel how you lead your whole life.

I pretend I'm one of the royal family when I'm in a hotel and that the hotel belongs to me - it is a palace.

All you're trying to do in an improvisation is get as much material as possible for the editing room.

I know if I were to drop dead now, people would probably write nice things in the obit.

You try to figure out things to keep yourself interested. It's very easy to get lulled.

You go through publicists because it's easy for a publicist to say to another publicist, 'No'.

Androgyny is not trying to manage the relationship between the opposites; it is simply flowing between them.

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.

I am playing with the assumptions that we have in our everyday life when we are tripped up or fooled and we learn something, that makes things exciting - I am having fun with that stuff, but you have to manage it so it doesn't get too cute, that's what I trying to work toward.

'Thou shalt not get found out' is not one of God's commandments; and no man can be saved by trying to keep it.

Well, I think that those of us in public life that are trying to do a good job, and that are faced with this popular new game that the media has of being critical of everything that anybody in public office does probably are thin-skinned.

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.

Votes are like trees, if you are trying to build a forest. If you have more trees than you have forests, then at that point the pollsters will probably say you will win.

I'd been trying for all of the eight years we'd been married to have a child, and finally I did.

Yeah; I'm a much better blues player than anybody knows, but being in the kind of group I'm in, we were always trying to make popular records.

Uhm, I'm the one wanting the lessons! I don't want to say too much about it because I'd rather have you see the movie, but he's trying to find his music.

So my idea of neurotic is spending too much time trying to correct a wrong. When I feel that I'm doing that, then I snap out of it.

I've always done food that can work in a set time frame. The message I'm trying to get across is, it doesn't have to take three days to do this. With planning, you can do a lot and really have quality food every day.

I meditate a lot, but I am constantly in pain. I'm trying to live with this. You just have to accept it.

I trained and trained and went up against Kurt, then being a world champion in '94, and after that I did Tommy's tour and then my tour and all this stuff and just trying to deal with it all. And now, I've just kind of backed off a little.

You feel the music needs something but you don't know what. So you start searching, fitting, measuring, trying. Every time you try another angle. And sometimes that's frustrating, especially if you don't come up with something for three days.

Trying to give back a little bit is important.

Intimacy comes from being yourself on the stage and making the audience feel, without trying, that you're sittin' down there with 'em, playing, and that can happen in a big hall, if you have a good audience that want to listen.

While advances in scientific research have led to some new and exciting treatments that have enlarged and enhanced the quality and length of human life, we must not lose sight as to what we are trying to accomplish.

Playing polo is like trying to play golf during an earthquake.

Orlando's a part of me. The next guy's a part of me. And the next guy's a part of me. That's all I'm trying to do, is tell cool stories that people can relate to.

In modelling, there is no point in trying to prove you have a brain, so why even bother? I'd sooner save the energy for something more meaningful.

I have spent more than half a lifetime trying to express the tragic moment.