When you make a drama, you spend all day beating a guy to death with a hammer, or what have you. Or, you have to take a bite out of somebody's face. On the other hand, with a comedy, you yell at Billy Crystal for an hour, and you go home.

One of the things about acting is it allows you to live other people's lives without having to pay the price.

I don't like to watch my own movies - I fall asleep in my own movies.

I think Hollywood has a class system. The actors are like the inmates, but the truth is they're running the asylum.

I go to Paris, I go to London, I go to Rome, and I always say, 'There's no place like New York. It's the most exciting city in the world now. That's the way it is. That's it.'

When you make a drama, you spend all day beating a guy to death with a hammer, or what have you. Or, you have to take a bite out of somebody's face. On the other hand, with a comedy, you yell at Billy Crystal for an hour, and you go home.

It's important not to indicate. People don't try to show their feelings, they try to hide them.

The talent is in the choices.

There's nothing more ironic or contradictory than life itself.

You'll have time to rest when you're dead.

There is a certain combination of anarchy and discipline in the way I work.

I've never been one of those actors who has touted myself as a fascinating human being. I had to decide early on whether I was to be an actor or a personality.

You learned the two greatest thing in life, never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut.

Good directors can bring certain things out of you, with their intensity or gentleness or sensitivity or understanding. They can make an actor feel he can do no wrong.

I always tell actors when they go in for an audition: Don't be afraid to do what your instincts tell you. You may not get the part, but people will take notice.

I love to find new people. It's not for the sake of their being new; it's because if you find someone who perfectly fits a part, that's such a great thing.

I mean, the actors that I admired were Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, an actress named Barbara Harris. And Greta Garbo. They were great actors.

I spent lunchtime in a grave during the filming of 'Bloody Mama.' When you're younger, you feel that's what you need to do to help you stay in character. When you get older, you become more confident and less intense about it - and you can achieve the same effect.

I think it's important to have had at least a few years of obscurity, where people treat you like everybody else.

I'll work with a director if I think I'm going to get into a comfortable situation, and if it's someone I respect and who respects me, even if they're not so well known. Movies are hard to make, and you have to work toward a common ethic and do your best.

If it's a very emotional scene, you're kind of relieved when you've done it, kind of spent. And there are times when you can be rattled, certain characters if they're hyper, that can carry over, the residue of that. But I try to leave it on the set.

If it's the right chair, it doesn't take too long to get comfortable in it.

Italy has changed. But Rome is Rome.

Movies are hard work. The public doesn't see that. The critics don't see it. But they're a lot of work. A lot of work.

My mother worked for a woman, Maria Ley-Piscator, who with her husband founded the Dramatic Workshop, which was connected to the New School. My mother did proofreading and typing and stuff or her, and as part of her payment, I was able to take acting classes there on Saturdays when I was 10.

The director respects what they've hired you for and chosen you for: to do the part and respect what you're doing.

The hardest thing about being famous is that people are always nice to you.

Time goes on. So whatever you're going to do, do it. Do it now. Don't wait.

Auditions are like a gamble. Most likely you won't get the part, but if you don't go, you'll never know if you could've got it.

When you feel that you cant fight it you just go for it. When it comes to the arts passion should always trump common sense.

You learned the two greatest things in life, never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut.

I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage.

The kinds of shows that seem to work now, the comedy shows, are those which require very little attention. They're superficial and I like articulate comedy.

A lot of people have gotten into comedy because of certain influences in their lives or events that were painful, and I really have wracked my brain to figure it out. I pretty much have had a normal childhood. Maybe it was too normal.

I grew up wanting to make movies, and along the way I suddenly found that I had a career doing comedy.

I really enjoy comedy. It's a real challenge.

I've mainly been in dramas, so this is one of my first comedy kind of performances in Cecil B. Demented.

Well I sure had been looking for a comedy for years without any success.

Comedy is so hard; it's so much harder than drama. The pacing of it, the energy of it.

Stand-up comedy and poverty. Those were my two main endeavors.

It seems like when I first started, people got into comedy because they wanted to be good comedians.

It is really hard to do comedy; it takes a lot of energy and focus. It's rather like music: It's a lot of hitting notes precisely.

This is one of his most human and most amusing and witty novels. The characters are very Indian. I decided that I wanted to do a comedy, so this was just the right one.

The English can be a very critical, unforgiving people, but criticism can be good. And this is a country that loves comedy.

Black Comedy is a farce that is played in the dark, as you know, with the lights full on. It's the Chinese convention of reversing light and dark, and exactly where anybody is at any given moment is the play.

I'd really been wanting to do a television series. I was looking for a comedy.

I think Andy Kaufman is to comedy what the Velvet Underground was to music - it's like, 80 thousand records sold, but everybody who bought one started a band.

Comedy is really not like any other art form in that it's very specialized and varied in it's content, but generic in it's title.

Comedy may be big business but it isn't pretty.