I love kids, but they are a tough audience.

One of my favourite actors of all time, although he doesn't necessarily play villains, is Peter Lorre.

I only ever play Vegas one night at a time. It's a hideous, gaudy place; it may not be the end of the world per se, but you can certainly see it from there.

The essential truth is that sometimes you're worried that they'll find out it's a fluke, that you don't really have it. You've lost the muse or - the worst dread - you never had it at all. I went through all that madness early on.

You have this idea that you'd better keep working otherwise people will forget. And that was dangerous.

Gentiles are people who eat mayonnaise for no reason.

I left school and couldn't find acting work, so I started going to clubs where you could do stand-up. I've always improvised, and stand-up was this great release. All of a sudden, it was just me and the audience.

The improv, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but when it does, it's like open-field running.

Okra is the closest thing to nylon I've ever eaten. It's like they bred cotton with a green bean. Okra, tastes like snot. The more you cook it, the more it turns into string.

In America they really do mythologise people when they die.

Performing comedy in San Francisco to begin with is pretty wild. You've got to - you've got the human game preserve to play off of. And it's a lot of great characters everywhere. You work off that, and then you play the rooms, and eventually you get to a point where you're playing a club that is a comedy club, with other comics.

Do I perform sometimes in a manic style? Yes. Am I manic all the time? No. Do I get sad? Oh yeah. Does it hit me hard? Oh yeah.

My mother's idea of natural childbirth was giving birth without makeup. She was hyper-positive - the world is a wonderful place, rainbows and unicorns. If you said anything contrary to her, you were basically exiled.

I loved school, maybe too much, really. I was summa cum laude in high school. I was driven that way.

I met Nelson Mandela, and I really didn't know what to say. It was years ago at a benefit. I was just in awe of this man because of what he'd done.

Tweets? That stuff kills conversation. And people taking pictures with their phone or recording you, sometimes surreptitiously, is creepy. They come up and just start talking to you, and you can see the red light on their phone.

When you look at Prince Charles, don't you think that someone in the Royal family knew someone in the Royal family?

When I went home from Juilliard, I couldn't find acting work.

From the point of view of being in the public radar, comedians have less problems than other actors. Action movie stars like Stallone or Schwarzenegger usually attract the more aggressive fans.

I have an idea for a movie called 'The Walken Dead' which is about a town where, instead of zombies, everyone becomes Chris Walken.

I think 'Dead Poets' was probably my favorite, just to get started with the idea of doing a movie that people treated as more than a movie.

A lot of vets like 'Good Morning Vietnam' - I get great letters from guys.

I loved running, but all of a sudden everything hurt so much. I started cycling when Zelda was born.

The 'Aladdin' thing - that's not work; that's just fun. Three days in the recording studio going mad, then the animators do all the work. Not a bad way to cash a large check, my friend.

The idea of Juilliard was that it would give you this toolbox full of skills that you could take with you and apply to anything.

In 'The Secret Agent,' it's basically a character that was admired by Theodore Kaczynski, which is some fan mail you don't really want to open. This is a man who is a chemist and who specializes in making bombs and despises humanity.

Politics is so personal, vicious and immediate, how are you going to get anything done? Even the local politics where I live have gotten so ugly.

I write on big yellow legal pads - ideas in outline form when I'm doing stand-up and stuff. It's vivid that way. I can't type it into an iPad - I think that would put a filter into the process.

I don't have a college degree, and my father didn't have a college degree, so when my son, Zachary, graduated from college, I said, 'My boy's got learnin'!'

I've never been asked to appear on 'I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!,' so I guess I mustn't be on the professional skids just yet.

In the process of looking for comedy, you have to be deeply honest. And in doing that, you'll find out here's the other side. You'll be looking under the rock occasionally for the laughter.

I started doing comedy because that was the only stage that I could find. It was the pure idea of being on stage. That was the only thing that interested me, along with learning the craft and working, and just being in productions with people.

Sometimes you have to make a movie to make money.

I bought one of the first Nintendo systems and brought that home, and we were playing 'Legend of Zelda' at the time, and it was addicting, and I was playing it for hours and hours and hours.

I've had a lot of people tell me they watched 'Old Dogs' with their kids and had a good time.

I think it's great when stories are dark and strange and weirdly personal.

Winning an Oscar is an honor, but, between you and me, it does not makes things easier.

With film roles, it just has to be a character either I haven't done before, or a role with somebody really interesting or with an interesting person or group of people.

You can start any 'Monty Python' routine and people finish it for you. Everyone knows it like shorthand.

The Russians love Brooke Shields because her eyebrows remind them of Leonid Brezhnev.

I knew Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were really talented. As actors, they were both studly young men, and they had great writers' chops.

I'm much more open to being a supporting actor right now. At the age of 60, I'll be second fiddle. Fine. I'm happy to do it.

You'll notice that Nancy Reagan never drinks water when Ronnie speaks.

The bad thing about being a famous comedian is that every now and then someone approaches me to tell an old joke. Don't tell me jokes - I have that. People also say the weirdest things, sometimes sarcastic things, and even evil things. They like to provoke to get a reaction.

Acting is different from stand-up. It gives you this ability to enter into another character, to create another person.

My style is bad white-boy dancing. I can do swing a little bit, but nothing beyond that. My solo dancing is sad. I use my arms, badly.

I have a difficult time doing an Irish accent; even now, it kind of fades slowly into Scottish.

There's a show in America where all these people compete with ferrets, and they don't even do anything. They basically just hold them up, and if they don't bite you, they might win.

I enjoy performing for heavily armed people. It's easier than going to Georgia.

I was only a leading man for a minute; now I'm a character actor.