“I got the sense that Alabama is a place where people don’t want handouts and don’t much care for people talking out of the side of their mouth.”

It’s one thing to mess stuff up and break stuff, but [Borat] is really pointing out the ideology of America.

Old man with an old phone. That’s never not funny.

It’s crazy, but even at funerals, people will get huge laughs.

I grew up with a single mom who was a waitress. We were on food stamps.

We punch mirrors and we explore our darker selves. No, it’s just an amalgam of all newscasters that we grew up with. Sort of like before there was cable, when these people were like gods.

David O. Russell is probably my favorite filmmaker. He’s not only a great director, but he’s also a great writer.

I’m just a giant film fan, so I love action movies out of all kinds of movies. As a film geek, it’s amazing to be able to shoot this stuff.

As for movies, what’s great about comedy is that if your movie gets laughs and makes money, you have freedom.

I always give myself a little part in every movie.

We get so much information during the day that doesn’t really tell us anything.

There’s a lot of things you can’t control. But you can always be a pro.

I would never call myself cultural elite, but you might be cultural elite.

The one thing for sure is, I don’t ever want to waste a movie. I don’t ever want to waste effort.

I don’t think there’s ever been a moment in history where that, as an artistic message, has played very well, because people in their hearts know that’s terrible and a lie.

Everyone is sort of in their own little area counting lines and no one talks when film’s not rolling. There’s constantly actors coming to me back behind the monitor screaming at me, “Why did my line count drop?” It’s a nasty tense environment.

Animals talking are very rarely funny. But animals behaving as animals – always funny.

So what if it’s risky? It’s the right thing to do. What we’re talking about is 160 people in deep pain. It only affects them.

And while I’m talking to you, every second I’m talking, a second is passing. Gone. Count them up. Count them down. They’re gone. Each one bringing you closer to your dying time.

The strangest thing is at tea breaks, or coffee breaks or lunch, you forget you’re a zombie. And you’re talking about politics to somebody at the table and you forget that you have a bullet hole in your forehead.

I love to work, although sometimes I can spend whole days doing nothing more than picking the lint off the carpet and talking to my mother on the phone.

Doing leads more surely to talking than talking to doing.

I really liked Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls and a couple of others, but with these kinds of movies the best part is the ‘talking about it over a beer afterwards’ bit – and once is kind of enough.

[We] ought to show peculiar zeal…in taking precautions for their safety. I for one have done all that lay in my power, and have not thought it beneath me to step into workshops of the meaner sort now and again and study the obscure operations of mechanical arts.

Buddy Hackett [was] talking – this is Hackett, not me – about the Virgin Mary, a limerick sort of thing, and all these children and families … the look of absolute horror.