“When the phone started ringing too many times, I had to take it back to what I can handle. I take my chances on a job or a person as opposed to a situation. I don’t like to have a situation placed over my head.”

Golf was my first glimpse of comedy. I was a caddy when I was a kid. I was on the golf course rather than being in lessons, but I can play better now than I could then.

All parties are good.

People say I’m difficult and sometimes that’s a badge of honour.

People confuse friendship and relaxation. It’s incredibly important to be relaxed – you don’t have a chance if you’re not relaxed. So I try very hard to relax any kind of tension. But friendship is different.

In Japan, you have no idea what they are saying, and they can’t help you either. Nothing makes any sense. They’re very polite, but you feel like a joke is being played on you the entire time you’re there.

Nowadays, the scripts are just so much better, that you don’t have to feel that way. You feel like the script’s coming to you, you can just relax. You don’t have to drive the boat.

You can’t really control how people are going to feel about you; all you can really do is be yourself.

If I run into someone on the street, that’s one thing. But answering mail for a living? I like a job where you can play and act kind of goofy and have some fun.

The more relaxed you are, the better you are at everything: the better you are with your loved ones, the better you are with your enemies, the better you are at your job, the better you are with yourself.

Afghanistan is just one of those countries that no group can conquer. It’s so challenging to live, and the people are so close among their own tribes, their own groups, that you can’t rule them all, you can’t get an accord from all of them.

It’s all about chemistry. Talent alone won’t get it done.

We’re creating a TV show of Scrooge, starring Jamie Farr, with Buddy Hackett as Scrooge.

I count on the kindness of strangers.

When I started, the scripts weren’t as good, and you’d have to have a huge burst of energy to go, “Sheesh, how am I going to? This stuff’s no good.”

Harold Ramis and I together did the ‘National Lampoon Show’ off Broadway, ‘Meatballs,’ ‘Stripes,’ ‘Caddyshack,’ ‘Ghostbusters’ and ‘Groundhog Day.’ He earned his keep on this planet. God bless him.

When you did the job, you thought you were just trying to amuse your friends who are all on the job. I’m just trying to make the sound guy laugh, the script supervisor.

We must beat the iron while it is hot, but we may polish it at leisure.

With writing, we have second chances.

We may imagine Chance and Design to be, as it were, in Competition with each other, for the production of some sorts of Events, and may calculate

The solid wealth of insurance companies and the success of those who organsie gambling are some indication of the profits to be derived from the efficient use of chance.

There is nothing mind can do that cannot be better done in the mind’s immobility and thought-free stillness. When mind is still, then truth gets her chance to be heard in the purity of the silence.

The only chance for much intellectual improvement in the female sex, was to be found in the families of the educated class and in occasional intercourse with the learned.

When mind is still, then truth gets her chance to be heard in the purity of the silence.

It is part of the business of life to be affable and pleasing to those whom either nature, chance or circumstance has made our companions.