My problem is that I don't get the same exhiliration from success as I get depression from failure.

You know that look that women have when they want to have sex? Me, either.

It is not the big events that hurt the most but rather the smallest questionable shift in tone at the end of a spoken word that can plow most deeply into the heart.

Starting out in movies, I felt very confident that I could act, because I was too dumb to know better.

Imagination sometimes has to stand in for experience.

I handed in a script last year and the studio didn't change one word. The word they didn't change was on page 87.

I had loved magic tricks from the time I was six or seven. I bought books on magic. I did magic acts for my parents and their friends. I was aiming for show business from early days, and magic was the poor man's way of getting in: you buy a trick for $2, and you've got an act.

When someone less capable is ahead of me, I am not pleased. It makes me insane.

Hosting the Oscars is like making love to a beautiful woman — it's something I only get to do when Billy Crystal's out of town.

I don't want the way I live to get out to the world. Once private things get into print, everybody knows exactly who you are, and it makes you dull.

Thankfully, persistence is a great substitute for talent.

There are few takers for the quiet heart.

My most persistent memory of stand-up is of my mouth being in the present and my mind being in the future: the mouth speaking the line, the body delivering the gesture, while the mind looks back, observing, analyzing, judging, worrying, and then deciding when and what to say next. Enjoyment while performing was rare -- enjoyment would have been an indulgent loss of focus that comedy cannot afford.

It's so hard to believe in anything anymore. I mean, it's like, religion, you really can't take it seriously, because it seems so mythological, it seems so arbitrary... but, on the other hand, science is just pure empiricism, and by virtue of its method, it excludes metaphysics. I guess I wouldn't believe in anything any more if it weren't for my lucky astrology mood watch.

The new phone book's here! The new phone book's here! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity I need. My name in print. That really makes somebody. Things are going to start happening to me now!

A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.

It is pain that changes our lives.