My father was the funniest guy I ever met. I'm not sure if I stole his stuff or if I inherited it.

You could knock my teeth out and break my nose, and there'd be something funny about it to me.

The best advice I can give you about falling is to never land.

I am just happy that I have children. I don't care what they want to do!

I would love to do a movie with Albert Brooks; we're so different, but I find him so funny, and I can be just as seemingly narcissistic as he comes off, the 'it's all about me' kind of thing.

In this business, you can come and go in a second.

Nobody prepares you for what happens when you get famous, and I didn't handle it well.

I really love making movies. I just have this yearning in my stomach to go back and somehow subversively screw up television a little bit again.

Anybody can reach anywhere from five to 15 million people weekly making a president look like an idiot, as I did back then, or Tina Fey did with Sarah Palin... You're always preaching to the choir one way or the other.

I think I need to be taken away, dropped in some territory with just a lot of loud guys.

To me, talk shows are those things during the middle of the afternoon where the underbelly of society is made to look like Middle America.

The idea of trying to write sketches the same way we did on Saturday Night Live every day would be damn near impossible.

It seemed that my brother and I were always fighting in the back seat, and there was never any real reason for it.

I did comedy and parody television in the '70s. I was a liberal Democrat, and it was a very heady year.

Parodies came about because Mr. Ford was actually one of the better athletes of our presidents... but he continually had physical accidents... he was an easy target for me. The main idea was to get people laughing.

Be Funny. Be naturally funny. If you're not, get out of the business. Be compassionate.

I've usually had two styles: the Fletch character and the Clark Griswold character.

Ideally, I'd like to go right back to getting $7 million a picture and being the headliner. That's probably not going to happen.

It's incredible. Twenty-three minutes on the air, and I've got to shoot for twelve, fifteen hours a day. What the hell's that?

I have been asked to direct many times and usually said no.

For me, what makes you laugh makes you laugh.

It's about timing and rhythm. But who could be better than Chaplin or Keaton?

Chaplin was my idol. I remember watching those movies at this little theater in Woodstock, N.Y., when I was probably 6 and laughing so hard at the surprises, like Keaton suddenly being dragged by a streetcar.

If you get 'hot,' everyone's nice to you.

Anything I have blown a lot of money on? Well, I have three daughters and a wife - that's four women, and I'm working on a sitcom, so you could say that I am just trying to stay alive!

I did very well when I was younger, and I am fine.

I prefer movies because the money is better and certainly because you really know where you stand when you are making movies, and I have made a lot of them: 50-something - I don't know.

Who made me laugh when I was growing was Chaplin and the Marx Brothers, and then moving on, there were so many that I was a writer for for many years: I was a writer for the Smothers Brothers, Lily Tomlin, then I started on 'Saturday Night Live' as the head writer the first year we started it.

There's no vacation from being a parent.

It will eventually be discovered that the more you sleep, the healthier you are. Which means you'll really be at your healthiest when you pass away.

I turned down 'Forrest Gump.'

I've been too funny in my life to have to play a character who's... moderately funny.

It's not like I am working with the great innovators of all time, but at the same time, they are my friends.

I'd never be tied down for five years interviewing TV personalities.

When I saw 'Caddyshack,' I realized I couldn't act.

There was a whole slew of 'Cops and Robbersons,' just films that didn't measure up, that didn't stand for anything comedically. They were purely for a paycheck.

Avoid fatty foods, Bensonhurst, and hair care products.

Fame is a very unnatural human condition.

I come from a much freer kind of performance thing, where I rely on my own improv and my own sense of humor.

If what you do in life is perform to open up eyes and minds, to make people laugh, then it better damn well be new! It shouldn't be just a repetitious 'Hey, I'm still here!'

I'm a New Yorker, and I live in the country.

Thank God I have the right friends.

It wasn't as if I was simply some guy who had never seen the other side of the tracks.

It was pretty clear that I was a funny guy, just as a guy.

Damn, I had some great moves. I still have them; I'm just not using them at home a lot.

Frank Capra's grandson was a second Assistant Director on 'Christmas Vacation.'

It's so important, people laughing.

Laughter kills lonesome. It's one of the great things in our lives.