“The Army needs leaders the way a foot needs a big toe.”

I know how to be sour. I know that taste.

I met a woman who photographed celebrity dogs for a book, and she told me that Ralph Lauren’s dog is named Rugby. I said, Yeah, but his real name is Stickball.

Every day, he was talking to the studio about this helicopter shot.

Disneyland. The world’s biggest people trap, built by a mouse.

Those are my people, you know? The ones who are going to crash and burn.

The more relaxed you are, the better you are at everything.

Everybody had some sort of vision problem, some sort of damage – I had to bury myself in my napkin.

When I feel like I’m stuck, I do something – not like I’m Mother Teresa or anything, but there’s someone that’s forgotten about in your life, all the time. Someone that could use an ‘Attaboy’ or a ‘How you doin’ out there.

Now, the essence, the very spirit of Christmas is that we first make believe a thing is so, and lo, it presently turns out to be so. – Stephen Leacockof Christmas trees around the house, so it smells good.

I was at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards one year – they called me up when somebody canceled two days before the thing, and asked me to present some awards.

You want my dark side? Have I ever stolen anything? Not so much intentionally. But I don’t think it’s so much stealing as… being a part of the flow of the universe.

Be available for life to happen.

Well, the past is gone, I know that. The future isn’t here yet, whatever it’s going to be. So, all there is, is this. The present. That’s it.

The money thing is, the sort of Elvis Presley thing of buying you mother car is great, that’s very good. My mother has learned how to spend money.

No one really wants to admit they are lonely, and it is never really addressed very much between friends and family. But I have felt lonely many times in my life.

I’ve been lucky, I’ve had movies that made a lot of money, so I don’t feel like I have to kill every time out. I don’t want that pressure. I don’t need it.

I don’t think I could be a foot soldier. I don’t know if I could take orders too good. I’m a little lazy.

We must always skim over pleasures. They are like marshy lands that we must travel nimbly, hardly daring to put down our feet.

Withersoever the wheel of Fortune turns, Virtue stands firm upon her feet.

A true philosopher is like an elephant; he never puts the second foot down until the first one is solidly in place.

I’ve turned up to costume parties in the wrong costume. I’ve made social faux pas a plenty. I’ve put one foot in front of the other and fallen over.

When you freefall for 7,000 feet it doesn’t feel like you’re falling: it feels like you’re floating, a bit like scuba diving.

I got brilliant stories from people who’d never set foot in an MFA program and had published very little, and terrible stories from people who’d published a lot and had all the credentials. It was all over the map and that was part of the fun.

As for the accusation of intellectual pride, surely the boot is on the other foot. Atheists don’t claim to know anything with certainty — it’s the believers who know it all.