Acting is the perfect idiot’s profession.

I didn’t have to win, and winning wasn’t important to me. Being world champion wasn’t important to me. What was important to me was entertaining the audience, and whether that meant winning, losing, singing, or whatever it was on the live show we were doing every week, which was awesome, I was game for it.

I don’t spend too much time on my phone, laptop or television. However, I do occasionally watch documentaries and shows on streaming platforms.

Crankiness is at the essence of all comedy. My wife and I were discussing the different types of cranky. There’s entertaining cranky, annoying cranky, angry cranky.

Kids end up seeing my movies anyway but some of the mothers get mad at me so I figured I’d make one that I can’t get yelled at for.

Big pay and little responsibility are circumstances seldom found together.

Besides entertainment and action, I want to educate. You know, as a producer or director, we do have a responsibility to society.

Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.

Stand-up comedy is mine: it’s my entity; it’s my brand; I own it. I do it when I want to do it.

I grew up thinking that a research scientist was a natural thing to be.

The celebrity-chef thing, even at its worst, its most annoying, its silliest, its goofiest, its most egregious and cynical, has been a good thing.

I’m a workin‘ girl.

You can always think of something like the Xbox 360 as a super set-top box that can do everything the set-top box does, but then have the graphics to do the games as well.

I sell escapism.

I can’t act!

The tradition of the South is not urban… I think we are a region of storytellers, naturally, just from our tribal instincts. We did not have the pleasures of the theater or the dance, motion pictures when they came along. We simply entertain each other by talking.

I did go to Wellesley, a women’s college. And I am of a kind of strange generation which is transitional in terms of women who wanted to go out and get jobs.

I’ve always wanted to do a family movie.

The nice thing about being a celebrity is that, if you bore people, they think it’s their fault.

Because my career is so important, I think I make a lot of – I wouldn’t call them sacrifices, but just concessions for my job. I love what I do, and I want to do it for a long time.

When I’m getting to know someone, I look for someone who has passions that I respect, like his career. Someone who loves what he does is really attractive.

I can’t deny that label-support gave me a leg up – though not every successful artist needs it.

You see some of the weirdest people in Detroit casinos.

My music is a luxury.

Football games are on TV, and it doesn’t affect stadium attendance at all. It’s the same with movies. People who really love movies and like to go out on a Saturday night will go to the movie theater.

I probably hold the distinction of being one movie star who, by all laws of logic, should never have made it. At each stage of my career, I lacked the experience.

I’m a pretty funny guy, and I would love to do a comedy with a bunch of funny guys – movie-star guys, where they could help me through it.

What I do is just go over and over and over my lines and learn the script so well that I can just be easy and relaxed. That’s the way I always work.

If my mother knew I did this for a living, she’d kill me. She thinks I’m selling dope.

No man can succeed in a line of endeavor which he does not like.

The answer to all writing, to any career for that matter, is love.

I’m first and foremost a writer. I followed my personal legend, my childhood dream of becoming a writer, but I can’t say why I’m one.

I’m a working-class person, working with class.

We are not trying to entertain the critics. I’ll take my chances with the public.

I could have spent eight years doing anything, and at some level, it would have been fine. I could have focused on flowers. I could have focused on decor. I could have focused on entertainment. Because any First Lady, rightfully, gets to define her role. There’s no legislative authority; you’re not elected. And that’s a wonderful gift of freedom.

I don’t feel that I’m explaining the world or teaching people anything. And I’m not trying to be a mirror, showing them what’s really going on the world. All I’m trying to do is think of stuff that’s funny, just like when I’m kidding around with my friends.

In this knowledge-worker age, it’s now increasingly tied to doing well in school so you can get into better grad schools so you can get better jobs – so the pressure to do well is really high.

I used to rush home to see ‚Match Of The Day.‘ Whatever I was doing, I wouldn’t miss it.

If you look at me in ‚Ride Along,‘ even though I’m playing two different characters, my demeanor and my tone were not aggressive.

I seem to be getting a lot of things pushed my way that are strong women. It’s like people see Hackers and they send me offers to play tough women with guns, the kind who wear no bra and a little tank top. I’d like to play strong women who are also very feminine.

If it’s all instruction, you get annoyed with it and bored, and you stop reading. If it’s all entertainment, you read it quite quickly, your heart going pitty-pat, pitty-pat. But when you finish, that’s it. You’re not going to think about it much afterward, apart from the odd nightmare. You’re not going to read that book again.

Acting is a question of absorbing other people’s personalities and adding some of your own experience.

I want to show audiences I can act.

Throughout my 20s and early 30s, I had jobs that I loved. I worked in city government. I ran a youth organization. I served as an associate dean at a university. And I couldn’t imagine how a baby would fit into all of that.

One of the things you’re doing when you make art, apart from entertaining yourself and other people, is trying to see what ways of working feel good, what feels right.

To depend upon a profession is a less odious form of slavery than to depend upon a father.

Stand-up can take you in so many different places, man. So many doors can be opened up from stand-up comedy, and the first one that was opened up for me was acting. But you can go from acting to being a TV personality to being a radio personality to being a writer to being a producer, to just being a visionary, to voiceover work.

I make pop culture.

I’ve always loved the idea of playing Black Adam.

I did stand-up, weird and ignorant stuff about my career – anything for a laugh.

I wouldn’t put myself forward to do a film like ‚Changeling‘ if I thought I couldn’t pull people into a story because of all the other ways people see me.

I spent much of my childhood in northern Quebec, and often there was no radio, no television – there wasn’t a lot to entertain us. When it rained, I stayed inside reading, writing, drawing.

I never listen to the radio unless I rent a car.

I was very honored to get to be part of ‚American Idol.‘

I’ve been reading tabloids since I was nine. I love a good story.

We are all here for a spell, get all the good laughs you can.

Dude, maybe not everyone loves ‚Glee.‘ Me included. I watched 10 minutes and it wasn’t my thing.

When I do stand-up shows at colleges, girls will talk to me after the show, and that always feels good. I like talking to them.

When I started out, I didn’t have any desire to be an actress or to learn how to act. I just wanted to be famous.

Stand-up is my baby.

In any profession it gets to be a grind.