“Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin.”

We’re all blessed with a lot of timidity and a lot of worry and anxiety, and vanity is a good antidote.

Judd Apatow is pretty good, both as a producer and as a director.

I don’t believe in this business of being behind, better to be in front.

A cinema villain essentially needs a moustache so he can twiddle with it gleefully as he cooks up his next nasty plan.

The brilliance of Max Brooks is that he always quotes authorities at the back of his books that never existed. Like a Russian professor he made up that validates a story or character.

He who hesitates is poor.

Immortality is a by-product of good work.

As far as songwriters, I’ve always been a fan of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and George Gershwin; those guys mean a lot to me.

There’s an army story in me, and I think there’s a WWII Brooks film somewhere.

I know how to make it a great musical. I’ve got to. It’s like I’ve got to see it on stage.

I like Chris Rock. He’s dangerous.

Well, just being stupid and politically incorrect doesn’t work. You can be politically incorrect if you’re smart.

Bad taste is simply saying the truth before it should be said.

If you’re quiet, you’re not living. You’ve got to be noisy and colorful and lively.

Everything we do in life is based on fear, especially love.

I was a soldier in WWII. The last couple of months of the war I was actually in combat.

Being such a tomboy growing up, that was one thing that changed me as a person, as well. It broadened me, like me cracking myself open in a certain way.

For me, being onstage for an hour and a half, my confidence was really huge for me. Doing eight shows a week for a run.

Be yourself. Don’t pretend that you know something you don’t.

All human beings have a right, and duty, to be joyful. Anything that thwarts this spiritual human right goes against the very purpose of human being.

We must not rest until right livelihood is within reach of every human being upon this earth we love and cherish.

The more honest and authentic we are, the more deeply we go into the mystery of our own being.

An ordinary man seeks freedom through enlightenment. An enlightened man expresses freedom through being ordinary.

Enlightenment is, in the end, nothing more than the natural state of being.