“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.”

Anybody can direct, but there are only eleven good writers.

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.

I’m an orphan. But the public has adopted me, and that has been my only family. The biggest family in the world is my fans.

I always felt I’ve been tough, and that my tolerance for pain is pretty high.

I’m really proud, just seeing a lot of the kids that have been inspired by me.

Everything is traditionally slow – much faster than it ever has been on earth but still far, far too slow.

Almost everything that is great has been done by youth.

A contemptuous indifference turns into an enemy a woman who, well treated, might have been an angel.

In folk music, I’ve always been fond of the fragment. The song that has one verse. And you don’t know anything about the characters, you don’t know what they’re doing, but they’re doing something important. I love that. I’m really a sucker for that kind of song.

It’s a near miracle that nuclear war has so far been avoided.