No one is any one thing.

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'.

I've always had a compassion for characters in novels - the sense that they are, whatever they might think, living in a world that has a shape they don't know and can't finally alter.

They're completely American. When I served my son falafel in a pita the other day, he said, 'Daddy, this taco is very good.'

When I see your smile, and I know it's not for me, that's when I'll miss you.

We have two strategies for coping the way of avoidance or the way of attention.

We cannot afford the creeping paralysis that destroys the effective will of democracy - the paralysis carried by hate and rancor, between class and class, person and person, party and party, as plague is carried through the streets of a town.

Three years ago the Government announced the creation of Reconciliation Place, and said that it would include a memorial to those removed from their families. However, they refused to include any of those who were removed in the design of their own memorial.

It is by attempting to reach the top in a single leap that so much misery is produced in the world.

When you have little children, you want to tell them about joy and happiness and hope. And then comes the time you want to tell them there are tough moments. I admire people who can do that.

Without accepting the other person's thinking, you cannot further your own interest. You need the other's help to get results.

It's just like any relationship, the more contained the environment, the more the good stuff appears and the more the bad stuff will reveal itself.

Can you not see that women could do and would do a hundred times more for the slave, if she were not fettered?

In the giraffe with a total height of 5 m., the heart is at a height of about 2.5 m., and it would be extremely interesting to know just how the giraffe avoids the development of filtration oedema in its long legs.

When I'm in New York, I just want to walk down the street and feel this thing, like I'm in a movie.

You forget that the kingdom of heaven suffers violence: and the kingdom of heaven is like a woman.

I am ever mindful of the legacy of my grandfather, the founder of this Kingdom, who had said to me that he perceived his life as a link in a continuous chain of those who served our nation and that he expected me to be a new and strong link in the same chain.

Just because you have opposition doesn't make you a great leader.

Laughter has no foreign accent.

We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan; and a widower that man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing a friend, by what name do we call him? Here every language is silent and holds its peace in impotence.

A prophet or an achiever must never mind an occasional absurdity, it is an occupational risk.

We gain nothing by being with such as ourselves. We encourage one another in mediocrity. I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself.

Never say no to anything, whatever the universe brings me. I've always lived by that.

Diamonds are formed in pressure; that is why God allows you to go through difficult times

Everybody in my family cooks, so growing up and being around it... if I was going to spend time with everybody, it was helping them in the kitchen.