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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

In America they really do mythologise people when they die.

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.

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

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.

Gentiles are people who eat mayonnaise for no reason.

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