“You got to be brave. If you feel something, you’ve really got to risk it.”

I don’t have a mission. I don’t have a torch to burn.

Everything starts with writing. And then to support your vision, your ideas, your philosophy, your jokes, whatever, you’ve gotta perform them and/or direct them, or sometimes just produce them.

These men both publicly and privately have done so much for me. Without Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick I would be living in a little motel just around the corner here, trying to make ends meet.

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.

All short women have a delayed fuse. Marry a taller woman: My wife was an inch or two taller than me; it’s a sign of security.

I loved Westerns as a little kid, and I loved horror films.

If Shaw and Einstein couldn’t beat death, what chance have I got? Practically none.

I love writing songs. I’m a songwriter.

If you stand on a soapbox and trade rhetoric with a dictator you never win.

When you come to Germany as a Jew you have an uneasy feeling, but I’ve always felt okay in Berlin.

Dom DeLuise was a big man in every way. He was big in size and created big laughter and joy.

I’m still a horse that can run. I may not be able to win the Derby, but what do you do when you retire? People retire and they vegetate. They go away and they dry up.

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.

You’re always a little disappointing in person because you can’t be the edited essence of yourself.

You’ve got to jump around a lot, for life is the very opposite of death, and therefore you must at very least think noisy and colorfully, or you’re not alive.

Life is too damn short and [screwed] up to go through it silently loving someone and never telling them how you feel. [Screw]

That story hit me right, man. I know no guy ever made me feel as good as an audience. I’m really far into this now, really committed.

I don’t know, I just want to feel as much as I can, it’s what ‘soul’ is all about.

I like people who shake other people up and make them feel uncomfortable.

You can’t make up something that you don’t feel. I didn’t make it up. I just opened my mouth and it existed.

You can feel all things at once, so why not wear all things at once?

feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal

How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio.