“All short women have a delayed fuse. Marry a taller woman: My wife was an inch or two taller than me; it’s a sign of security.”

I know how to make it a great musical. I’ve got to. It’s like I’ve got to see it on stage.

I like Chris Rock. He’s dangerous.

Well, just being stupid and politically incorrect doesn’t work. You can be politically incorrect if you’re smart.

Bad taste is simply saying the truth before it should be said.

If you’re quiet, you’re not living. You’ve got to be noisy and colorful and lively.

Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin.

Everything we do in life is based on fear, especially love.

I was a soldier in WWII. The last couple of months of the war I was actually in combat.

Anybody can direct, but there are only eleven good writers.

I don’t have a mission. I don’t have a torch to burn.

Everything starts with writing. And then to support your vision, your ideas, your philosophy, your jokes, whatever, you’ve gotta perform them and/or direct them, or sometimes just produce them.

These men both publicly and privately have done so much for me. Without Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick I would be living in a little motel just around the corner here, trying to make ends meet.

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.

I loved Westerns as a little kid, and I loved horror films.

If Shaw and Einstein couldn’t beat death, what chance have I got? Practically none.

I love writing songs. I’m a songwriter.

He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity, that blends, and (as it were) fuses , each into each, by that synthetic and magical power, to which I would exclusively appropriate the name of Imagination.

First one, then the other, getting the upper hand, and too seldom fusing till the result has the mellowness of full achievement.

Male and female have the power to fuse into one solid, both because both are nourished in both and because soul is the same thing in all living creatures, although the body of each is different.

Male and female have the power to fuse into one solid, both because both are nourished in both and also because soul is the same thing in all living creatures, although the body of each is different.

They spent their time doing nothing… they let intimacy fuse them.

Moscow, how many strains are fusing in that one sound, for Russian hearts! What store of riches it imparts!

All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient.

When love has fused and mingled two beings in sacred and angelic unity, the secret of life has been discovered so far as they are concerned.