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" I don't know that a political climate - as long as it's still a free country - makes much difference in the film world. "

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" Stand-up comedy is a very hard thing on the spirit. There are people who transcend it, like Jack Benny and Steve Martin, but in its essence, it's soul-destroying. It tends to turn people into control freaks. "

" The reason that most British actors are better than most American actors in the end is that they don't make any money. At the very end of their lives, they get into a space movie and they make a lot of money, but until that happens, basically, they don't have bank accounts. They live from day to day. "

" I asked a shrink: 'Everything is so great. Why am I still so angry?' He said, 'Anger doesn't go away.' I always thought it was kind of a good engine. "

" Oh my God, if I know anything, I know I'm gonna die! I never forget that. I know I'll be forgotten in a minute, and that's just fine with me. "

" Clay Aiken is amazing beyond that glorious voice. Turns out he is an excellent comic actor and a master of character. "

" There's nothing better than discovering, to your own astonishment, what you're meant to do. It's like falling in love. "

Falling In Love

" If you lose a parent, it never goes away. As a kid, I dreamed about my father coming back for 15 or 20 years. I still do sometimes. "

" I love to take actors to a place where they open a vein. That's the job. The key is that I make it safe for them to open the vein. "

" Nerves provide me with energy... It's when I don't have them, when I feel at ease, that's when I get worried. "

" I think a director can make a play happen before your eyes so that you are part of it and it is part of you. If you can get it right, there's no mystery. It's not about mystery. It's not even mysterious. It's about our lives. "

" When we talk about reviews, what we are really talking about is just a market report - it's like reading about the new Lexus. You have to know what the guy writing the review cares about to understand his take. Does he like sports cars, or does he like Bentleys? "

" All movies are pure process. A commercial movie isn't less process than an art movie. You can't make your decisions about a film on the basis of, 'Is it important enough? Is it serious enough?' It's either alive or it's not for me. If it's alive, I want to do it. "

" I think that to make something alive, instead of on a page, is an honorable task. And it turns me on. "

" People, by and large, would rather be talking than listening. "

" It's very weird about movies: you never know which ones are going to stay alive and which one are going to be meaningless. When you're there, you couldn't possibly predict it. Some things slowly die, and others slowly stay a while. "

" I am drawn to the mystery of marriage. You can never know what the contract is between two people, and that is a very strong subject. I think it may be my subject. "

" Here's the most mysterious thing to me. I look back at those first plays I did and the first movies I did, and I only have one question, which is, 'What was I so confident about? Where did I get that? "

" You can always tell gifted and highly intelligent people as they always turn to the past. Any young person who knows anything that happened before 1980, or 1990, or 2000 for that matter, is immediately someone who is intelligent, probably creative, maybe a writer. Nobody who is drawn to the past and learning about the past is not gifted. "

" I keep coming back to it, over and over - adultery and cheating. It's the most interesting problem in the theater. How else do you get Oedipus? That's the first cheating in the theater. "

" Limitations are inspiring: they lead to thinking, so I don't mind them. "

" The reason you do this stuff - comedy, plays, movies - is to be seized by something, to disappear in the service of an idea. "

" I believed early and still believe that everybody who can act can do it already, just they don't know how and don't want to talk about it. "

" It took me forever, learning improvisation, because I had studied with Lee Strasberg - I dropped out of Chicago and went to his classes in New York for a couple of years, once or twice a week. What I didn't realize was I was learning directing because he wasn't all that good about acting, not for me. "

" The greatest thrill is that moment when a thousand people are sitting in the dark, looking at the same scene, and they are all apprehending something that has not been spoken. That's the thrill of it, the miracle - that's what holds us to movies forever. It's what we wish we could do in real life. "

" I used to say that winning the Oscar means being back at the Beverly Hills Hotel at 1 A.M. feeling empty. It's the industry voting. It doesn't come from God. It doesn't change your life, really. "

" I don't expect anything from reviews. Sometimes I am bemused by them. "

" As a little kid in a sometimes hard place, I went to the movies as often as I could. Movies - making them, seeing them - is not something that could ever lose its pleasure for me. That puts them on a short list of things that eternally give me joy - love, family, food, movies. "

" Comedy is brutal. It's powerful, though. "

" The whole point about laughter is it's like mercury: you can't catch it, you can't catch what motivates it - that's why it's funny. "

" We are being entertained all the time - in the bathroom, on the train, in our beds. Sure, there is a smaller audience for theater. But we know from radio that entertainment never goes away, it just changes. And more power to it. "