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" I still think that luck is what a lot of the good things come from. It's simply the luck of where you are, when. "

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" 'Catch-22' was a nightmare to make, and everybody was unhappy except me. "

" As a director, my job is, and always has been, divided into a number of things: dealing with the crew, the money and the studio, and the marketing and publicity. These are all different jobs that have to be learned and done as well as possible. The celebrity part rarely touches a director. "

" Very often when a story really holds us, it gets pushed away because it's too close for comfort. "

" It's very, very corrupting to the spirit, doing comedy. And you have to be almost a saint, like Jack Benny was, like Steve Martin is, to avoid the corrupting of it, because there's very little work where the actual work and the reward are simultaneous, and comedy is that. "

" 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. "

" The degree to which you're peculiar and different is the degree to which you must learn to hear people thinking. Just in self-defense you have to learn, where is their kindness? Where is their danger? Where is their generosity? "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" A great thing is happening on cable TV. You see characters change in stories over years, like in Tolstoy. That's a whole, thrilling new form that I really enjoy. They are Tolstoy-an in their endless character development and narrative changes... a show like 'Breaking Bad' is astonishing. "

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

" Fear of comedy is all so much about who you do it with. "

" Whether something is a success or not has never had much to do with what you do next. "

" Most great plays of the past lose their grip on immediacy; on application to our lives right now. "

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

" You could say that it's in talking movies that inner life begins to appear. You can see things happen to the faces of people that were neither planned nor rehearsed. "

" American society to me and my brother was thrilling because, first of all, the food made noise. We were so excited about Rice Krispies and Coca-Cola. We had only silent food in our country, and we loved listening to our lunch and breakfast. "

" Chicago is not a very fashion-driven place. Nobody says, 'Oh, you've got to come see these fabulous people!' Nobody cares. "

" Being with an insanely jealous person is like being in the room with a dead mammoth. "

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

" A play, after all, is a mystery. There's no narration. And as soon as there's no narration, it's open to interpretation. It must be interpreted. You don't have a choice... Each play can become many things. "

" There are absolutely almost perfect people who experience no guilt; they don't know what it is. They simply do what they need to do - or want to do - next. They see nothing wrong with it. They feel no guilt. They express no guilt. And it's not even certain what harm they do. "

" 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. "

" Any good movie is filled with secrets. "

" I think the main thing about comedy and humor is that it's impossible and always was impossible to define. "

" Never let people see what you want, because they will not let you have it. Never let anybody see what you feel, because it gives them too much power. You're probably better off not showing weakness whenever you can avoid it, because they'll go for you. "

" I came to love silence, because it's so rare, and it's now my favorite aural condition. "

" You want to make money, remake 'Cinderella.' You want to move people, remake the Hippolytus and Phaedra myth. "