“When I was growing up, This is Spinal Tap [1984] was the ultimate comedy, and it was the kind of thing I wanted to do. But you get to a point with parody where you can’t go much further because ultimately it’s feeding off of somebody else’s creativity.”

I know that I’m better as an actor when I’m working with a good actor. I think anytime you’re working with a better actor, it makes you a better actor.

I would like to do more dramas when I find a good role that will allow me to politely upset people’s expectations of me as a comic actor.

Oh, you can milk just about anything with nipples.

Very quickly after meeting Dustin, the whole image I had of him was shattered.

All those rumors about her being underweight are trash. She’s [Calista Flockhart] gorgeous.

When we were visiting New York City, I took my kids to the same playground where I went growing up. It was fun to feel that connection of having gone there as a kid and being there as a parent.

I’m not an expert on the Malaysian sense of humor.

I’ve had a very good career and I’m grateful that the public has had some level of acceptance and appreciation of my work.

It’s what I wanted to do with my life. Not necessarily just direct Jim Carrey movies, but to direct and act and write and create and along the way discover what it is that I’m about.

I don’t play hockey at all. I’m not comfortable on skates.

I don’t think it’s ever easy to be funny. I find it easy to amuse myself with a certain sort of cynical dark humor that tends toward the meaner side, like my character in Happy Gilmore. Those kinds of characters come easily to me.

I don’t devalue comedy as compared to drama. Not one bit.

I enjoy the work I do in comedies. It’s a valid test of your creative abilities.

I think people will be curious to see what I can do as a dramatic actor.

I had two projects that fell apart during preproduction. The first one was this movie that Judd Apatow and I had written about two guys following the Rolling Stones. It was going to be half concert film, half pseudo-documentary.

I recently watched that Lucie Arnaz-produced documentary [Lucy and Desi: A Home Movie, 1992] about her parents [Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz], and I saw so much of my own childhood there.

In order to be creative, you don’t have to be original.

Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.

I wanted to define the vocabulary of a wedding both visually and intellectually. The book is about more than weddings or wedding dresses. It’s a metaphor for women’s lives, their creativity.

Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.

All truly great art is optimistic. The individual artist is happy in his creative work. The fact that practically all great art is tragic does not in any way change the above thesis.

When I decided to get married at 40, I couldn’t find a dress with the modernity or sophistication I wanted. That’s when I saw the opportunity for a wedding gown business.

That’s the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.

How working for the wrong motives poisons our creativity and warps our ideas of success and failure.