Quote collection
339 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I don't think comic timing is the same as music timing, but I definitely find that I've learned from just writing in general that songs can be narrative without having a story."
"Be undeniably good. When people ask me how do you make it in show business or whatever, what I always tell them & nobody ever takes note of it 'cause it's not the answer they wanted to hear-what they want to hear is here's how you get an agent, here's how you write a script, here's how you do this-but I always say, “Be so good they can't ignore you.” If somebody's thinking, “How can I be really good?” people are going to come to you. It's much easier doing it that way than going to cocktail parties."
"I think communication is so firsbern."
"It was essential that I never show doubt about what I was doing."
"She looked down again and I was stymied. I sat. Oh, this was enough to make me love her, because I was right with her, understanding every second and longing to step in. I didn’t even need to know the specific that was troubling her, because to me her halting voice easily stood for the general woe that hangs in the air, even on life’s happiest days."
"I would assign every lie a color: yellow when they were innocent, pale blue when they sailed over you like the sky, red because I knew they drew blood. And then there was the black lie. That's the worst of all. A black lie was when I told you the truth."
"My fear represented the failure of the human system. It is a sad truth of our creation: Something is amiss in our design, there are loose ends of our psychology that are simply not wrapped up. My fears were the dirty secrets of evolution. They were not provided for, and I was forced to construct elaborate temples to house them."
"Kids like my act because I'm wearing nose glasses. Adults like my act because there's a guy who thinks putting on nose glasses is funny."
"The thing about the banjo is when you first hear it, it strikes many people as what's that? There's something very compelling about it to certain people."
"Hollywood must be the only place on earth where you can be fired by a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a baseball cap."
"Yeah, well, we're all writers, aren't we? He's a writer that hasn't been published, and I'm a writer who hasn't written anything."
"Women have choices, and men have responsibilities."
"You can't make something beautiful by trying to make something beautiful. Something becomes beautiful in the process of trying to be something else."
"Talent is the ability to say things well, but genius is the ability to, well, say things."
"Nothing I do is done by popular demand."
"My problem is that I don't get the same exhiliration from success as I get depression from failure."
"I really enjoy the social aspects of music as much as anything."
"Comedy is a distortion of what is happening, and there will always be something happening."
"What is a movie star? A movie star is many things. They can be tall, short, thin, or skinny. They can be Democrats... or skinny."
"Your only guidepost is your own instinct and judicious editing. In my stand-up act I learned that in the first 10 minutes I could say anything and it would get a laugh. Then I'd better deliver. In the movie it's the same thing. You get a lot of laughs when people first sit down and then the story better kick in. Many years in front of an audience, I would hope, give me a sense of what works."