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

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'.

The major political battles about guns in our society concern handguns and assault weapons, not long arms like hunting rifles.

A grateful heart is not one that is very selective and choosy about what to be grateful for.

Adventure books are my personal favorites. 'The Endurance,' a story about Ernest Shackleton's legendary Antarctica expedition, or 'Into Thin Air,' Jon Krakauer's personal account of the 1996 disaster on Mt Everest, are two notables.

In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher.

It is important to note that most of the patients in Ohio's mental health facilities have never committed crimes. They are institutionalised because they have lost touch with reality and are having problems functioning unaided in the community.

Civil disobedience is not accepted by religion and the state does not accept it and there are many verses in the Holy Book that talk of following the ruler.

Defense leaders should be searching for ways to reform out-of-date procurement processes, to collapse layers of Pentagon bureaucracy, and to restrain the growth in personnel and benefits costs. A critical first step in that process should be to conduct a full Pentagon audit to determine how DOD spends taxpayer dollars.

Moderates always seem to deal in hopes rather than in facts.

We tend to look through language and not realize how much power language has.

English policy may not yet have made the definite decision to attack us; but it doubtless wishes, by all and every means, even the most extreme, to hinder every further expansion of German international influence and of German maritime power.

Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.

The future of television is not on television but online. A majority of us are turning to our computers and mobile devices for news and entertainment, Millennials especially.

The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.

We should prepare our future workforce differently. It isn't just advanced STEM degrees. There are many jobs you can do without advanced degrees.

Without dignity identity is erased. In its absence men are defined not by themselves but by their captors and the circumstances in which they are forced to live.

Write because you love the work, not because of what might come from it. The journey is the purpose. Very Zen-like, I know, but honest to God it's the truth. And I have never had to deal with writer's block. Knock on wood.

We love, you know, children love the ingredients of poetry. And then they go into this tunnel that we call adolescence, and when they come out of it, they hate poetry.

It's not the things you don't know that trip you up. It's the things you think you know, but you don't. You fail to ask a certain question because you believe you know the answer. Separating your information from your assumptions can be very tricky business.

There's nothing fun about 30 people standing around watching you, like, pretend to pleasure someone. Nothing enjoyable about it, believe me.

I've met graduating college kids facing loan payments and a bad economy, and they are worried that they won't be able to get a job. This is not the way America needs to be.

This is a choice, ladies and gentleman, between Texas and Washington. Most of Ted Cruz's money comes from Washington, from outside the state of Texas, and they've run millions and millions of untrue ads against me.

The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control - 'indoctrination', we might say - exercised through the mass media.

I just love Chinese food. My favourite dish is number 27.