When I think about growing up, I feel most affected by two travels that I made working in cargo boats when I was 16 and 18. One of them crossed through the Mississippi and Baton Rouge and Mobile, Alabama, and another went all the way to Europe.

I think there's nothing wrong with being fixated on superheroes when you are 7 years old, but I think there's a disease in not growing up.

I think that the best things come from thought, without thinking. I think that's the smartest use of the intelligence that we all have.

I think intelligence basically can be in a way defined by the possibility of having two opposite ideas living together and at the same time functioning. That's why I think a smart script has two things living in the same place, and they're absolutely contradictory.

Men live by intervals of reason under the sovereignty of humor and passion.

I came back to New York after college like any number of struggling performers, and you just find that niche where you can have some sort of impact. And for me that turned out to be comedy.

Americans are pragmatic, relatively uncomplicated, hearty and given to broad humor.

At Temple University, and I'm sure this was the way in a lot of film classes, comedy was not an option, and not considered a serious form of expression. You had to make a film about an issue.