I don’t write material. Funny things happen to me in the course of a day, and I just make notes.

I’m sure most parents read to their children to explain what certain things mean. So books are a good way to convey a message to anybody. Everybody reads.

I went down the street to the 24-hour grocery. When I got there, the guy was locking the front door. I said, ‚Hey, the sign says you’re open 24 hours.‘ He said, ‚Yes, but not in a row.‘

I intend to inspire people with my story: motivate young people that grew up like myself, or even not like myself. Just, you know, go through the human experience.

In my career as a director, there’s always been some point where you get halfway through it, or three-quarters, and you go: ‚What is this thing all about, and why am I telling the story? Does anybody really care about seeing this?‘ At that time you have to say: ‚OK, forget that and just go ahead.‘

It doesn’t matter what temperature the room is, it’s always room temperature.

I am not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

The two things in the world we all share in this world are laughter and pain. We’ve all got problems. The levels of those problems vary, but we’ve all got problems. When you can take things that are painful and make them funny, that’s a gift – to you and your audience.

There used to be an old bad joke. I hope it’s not so much a good joke anymore. ‚Everybody’s from Scranton; no one’s in Scranton.‘

There are many things that happen every day that we could murmur about if we let ourselves go there. But they really aren’t worth the effort it takes to get upset and gripe about it.

I like gaps; all my stories have gaps. It seems this is the way people’s lives present themselves.

Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.

Just be a cool grandpa who’s creative, and hang out and tell stories and read a book in the library.

An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

I’m crazy, but I’m not stupid.

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.

Honestly, I just go to restaurants to eat so I won’t die. If there was a pill I could take in January and then I wouldn’t have to eat again for the rest of the year, I would take it. Of course, I wouldn’t want to sacrifice my chocolate cake and ice cream.

I loved writing for kids, I loved talking to children about what I’d written, I don’t want to leave that behind.

Don’t wait for the last judgment – it takes place every day.

My mother is from another time – the funniest person to her is Lucille Ball; that’s what she loves. A lot of times she tells me she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. I know if I wasn’t her son and she was flipping through the TV and saw me, she would just keep going.

You know an odd feeling? Sitting on the toilet eating a chocolate candy bar.

I’m entirely interested in people, and also other creatures and beings, but especially in people, and I tend to read them by emotional field more than anything. So I have a special interest in what they’re thinking and who they are and who’s hiding behind those eyes and how did he get there, and what’s the story, really?

All major religious traditions carry basically the same message, that is love, compassion and forgiveness the important thing is they should be part of our daily lives.

To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That’s what Norman Mailer did. That’s what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that’s what I do – that’s what I mean to do.

I make fun of situations and try and find the humor in things, but it’s never at the expense of the other guy.

No one is laughable who laughs at himself.

A good laugh is sunshine in the house.

As the poet said, ‚Only God can make a tree,‘ probably because it’s so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.

Whenever I say I made a record in the garage, people just assume that I have, like, a Lear jet parked in there or something. But really there’s old luggage, a couple of bikes. It’s big enough to put one minivan in. That’s it. No dartboard. I’m so not macho.

Some Christians feel guilty when they are doing something that isn’t ‚spiritual.‘ Somehow or another, they feel the need to hurry through the grocery store, dash through the house cleaning, and rush through all the daily aspects of life that seem irrelevant to their faith.

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.

As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.

I do not, in fact, use many puns. Certainly there are far fewer than people believe. But I suspect the ones I do occasionally use tend to hang around in people’s memories for a while.

I love nerdy, cute, quirky boys who don’t take themselves too seriously.

The difference between a misfortune and a calamity is this: If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, that would be a calamity.

I don’t need therapy. I’m not going to see a therapist; comedy acts as my therapy. I put my problems out there. I talk about them. I talk about everything before anybody has a chance.

What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.

Take my wife… Please!

It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.

You’re never going to kill storytelling, because it’s built into the human plan. We come with it.

You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?

The Italians and Spanish, the Chinese and Vietnamese see food as part of a larger, more essential and pleasurable part of daily life. Not as an experience to be collected or bragged about – or as a ritual like filling up a car – but as something else that gives pleasure, like sex or music, or a good nap in the afternoon.

I would never win an award for not loving pizza.

Let him that is without stone among you cast the first thing he can lay his hands on.

I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.

My comedy is different every time I do it. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

Almost any biographer, if he respects facts, can give us much more than another fact to add to our collection. He can give us the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders.

I’m spending a year dead for tax reasons.

Most country songs, certainly all the stuff I’ve written, are stories driven by characters.

I wake up every morning at nine and grab for the morning paper. Then I look at the obituary page. If my name is not on it, I get up.

My son is becoming me – just a silly, silly prankster guy.

Don’t be getting sloppy drunk and telling them dirty jokes.

Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.

I think a lot of people, including me, clammed up when a civilian asked about battle, about war. It was fashionable. One of the most impressive ways to tell your war story is to refuse to tell it, you know. Civilians would then have to imagine all kinds of deeds of derring-do.

I’m not confused. I’m just well mixed.

Kids are watching us. I experience it every single day. They hang on my every word, what I wear, what I say.

How we experience memory sometimes, it’s not linear. We’re not telling the stories to ourselves. We know the story; we’re just seeing it in flashes overlaid.

If you look at me close enough, there’s a small resemblance to a chicken nugget. I don’t know if it’s my skin texture or my hair, but the resemblance is definitely there.

You see, I am trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across – not to just depict life – or criticize it – but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me, you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful.