I learned a few things on my own since, and modified some of the things he taught me, but everything, unequivocally, that I learned about comedy writing I learned from Danny Simon.

You make films whether they're dramas or comedies about neurotic people. Flawed people. Interesting personality traits. To make them about calm, stable untroubled people isn't interesting.

My gift was in comedy. I found out I could make jokes. I could tell jokes. I could write them. So over the years, that's what I've done.

I'm a comedian. I make comic films and there are certain ideas that occur to me that are comic, with heavy, serious undertones. There are some ideas that are more frivolous to me. The next idea that could occur to me could be comedy about death and famine or something.

I think being funny is not anyone's first choice.

Dying is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.

Figures tell us there are already more people on earth than we need to move even the heaviest piano.

Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.

I failed to make the chess team because of my height.

“If the shoe doesn't fit, must we change the foot?” 

“The comedy of man survives the tragedy of man.” 

Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.

We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection.