“I love history. I’m very interested by it and I think it’s great to have a movie that brings it alive in a way. It’s sort of that romanticized version of it.”

I actually started working on Madagascar before my daughter was born.

Sometimes I wondered whether I hadn’t let my career get confined to one direction, but lately I’ve decided to accept the fact that I have this opportunity to be successful doing comedies.

I don’t know what that weid fantasy is that makes people go, “Oh, you must have had a great childhood.”

God was showing off when he made you.

Nobody makes me bleed my own blood – nobody!

Paul is Starsky, and I met him before shooting. He was very kind and encouraged us to go with what we wanted to do. It was very sweet to see them back with the car after 25 years.

A eugoogoolizer…one who speaks at funerals…Or did you think I was too stupid to know what a eugoogooly was?

When I didn’t have a family, I was much more of a workaholic. I still like to work, but I also want to be home with them. As you get older, you realize you need balance. If it’s not fun, what’s the point?

I think the most serious genre is the thing you’re going to get the most out of. If you’re trying to satirise a comedy, it’s hard to do that – it doesn’t really work as well. But I love the war movie genre and I’m a fan of all those movies that are part of what this movie is.

I’m just not a naturally cheery person. I’m naturally moody. I know that from people who spend a lot of time with me. People who spend a lot of time with me may not wish to spend a lot more time with me.

You’re freaked out that you’re going to be having a child, and once you’re looking after your daughter, it’s the most beautiful thing in the world.

You have to stay in character in between takes.

I was staying on [writer/director/actor] Eric Schaeffer’s couch in New York, and he said, “I’ve got this movie [If Lucy Fell]. Can you do five days on it?”

I’m very interested in the early American history, the time when the country came together.

Moisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.

And I was like, “Yeah, anything. Twenty-four hours times five is 120 hours. Oh, great, I’ll fill 120 hours of my life with something.” So I did that and it was fun, and then I did Flirting with Disaster.

Literature is the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear voices talking about everything in every possible way.

The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box.

When you can do the common things of life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world.

In teaching, you do not want to COVER things, you want to UNCOVER them. The best way to get good ideas is to have lots of ideas.

When Fate wills that something should come to pass, she sends forth a million of little circumstances to clear and prepare the way.

Don’t think. That is the wrong way to bring anything back. Let it go. Sooner or later it will flash into your mind.

You have to learn a few things, which you do along the way, but basically, poetry is a matter of the ear. Iambic pentameters or what constitutes a stanza comes naturally – your ears will know.

Now naturally, like many of us, I have a reluctance to change too much of the old ways.