I was kind of secretly hoping one of my kids would go out and make a million bucks. So when they put me in a home, at least I’ll have a window with a view.

It takes no more time to see the good side of life than it takes to see the bad.

I never promise anything. I don’t promise anything to my mum. I don’t promise anything to the supporters.

I see the world in black and white, and I don’t like compromising.

Ask an older person you respect to tell you his or her greatest regret.

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, and I’ll forgive Thy great big joke on me.

We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.

I actually don’t want a throne at all, because I don’t view myself as a queen; I view myself as one of my fans.

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.

In the end, everything is a gag.

Like so many American families, our families weren’t asking for much. They didn’t begrudge anyone else’s success or care that others had much more than they did… in fact, they admired it.

I believe God wants you to have money to pay your bills, send your kids to college and do charity work and build orphanages. There’s the teaching that we’re supposed to be poor to show that we’re humble. I don’t buy that. I think we’re supposed to be leaders. We’re supposed to excel.

I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, ‚Where’s the self-help section?‘ She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.

Sometimes there are no good guys. There are no bad guys. It seems like everybody is in the middle.

It’s a lot easier to stay idealistic if you don’t sign two to five next-of-kin letters every day.

People have told me, ‚You shouldn’t bring your daughter onto the podium, ‚cause it’s the workplace,‘ and things like that. But I’m not gonna really listen to that. I’m gonna do what I think is fun for me and my family, and everything’ll be all right.

When I’m a director, I look at myself the actor as a completely different person. It’s somebody else up there, an actor playing a role. I keep myself out of it.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

Marriage and family are ordained of God. The family is the most important social unit in time and in eternity. Under God’s great plan of happiness, families can be sealed in temples and be prepared to return to dwell in His holy presence forever. That is eternal life!

I’ve lost both parents in the last two years, so you pick up on that stuff. That’s the most terrible thing about being an author – standing there at your mother’s funeral, but you don’t switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill.

If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example.

When I get up and work out, I’m working out just as much for my girls as I am for me, because I want them to see a mother who loves them dearly, who invests in them, but who also invests in herself. It’s just as much about letting them know as young women that it is okay to put yourself a little higher on your priority list.

Have you ever thought how humiliating and distressing it was to be placed upon a sphere? For friendship it is a boon never to be able to be further apart than the antipodes. But suppose that you are leaving together to go on and on; it is impossible. To go beyond a certain point is to return to where you began.

Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.

I was terrible at straight items. When I wrote obituaries, my mother said the only thing I ever got them to do was die in alphabetical order.

A child thinks 20 shillings and 20 years can scarce ever be spent.

When a person starts to talk about their dreams, it’s as if something bubbles up from within. Their eyes brighten, their face glows, and you can feel the excitement in their words.

To correct a natural indifference I was placed half-way between misery and the sun. Misery kept me from believing that all was well under the sun, and the sun taught me that history wasn’t everything.

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

My mom’s one of 13 siblings, and they all got six kids, and till I was 13 everybody was in Compton.

If you tell a joke in the forest, but nobody laughs, was it a joke?

My father used to wear the same pants for like a week.

A great fortune is a great slavery.

It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.

There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.

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.

If you’re doing a biography, you try to stay as accurate as possible to reality. But you really don’t know what was going on in the person’s mind. You just know what was going on in the minds of people around him.

For me, it’s a purity thing about the joke itself. It’s a test of a joke whether or not you do it completely clean and it works. If it does, then that’s a legitimate item you have there. For me, it’s nothing to do with finding those words offensive. It’s just not what I’m in search of. Do it clean, and you are really earning that laugh.

I have no interest in Shakespeare and all that British nonsense… I just wanted to get famous and all the rest is hogwash.

Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.

Many people find the universe confusing – it’s not.

Of all nature’s gifts to the human race, what is sweeter to a man than his children?

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.

I was not the son of a worker or lacking in material or social resources for a relatively comfortable existence; I could say I miraculously escaped wealth.

People talk to people who perceive nothing, who have open eyes and see nothing; they shall talk to them and receive no answer; they shall adore those who have ears and hear nothing; they shall burn lamps for those who do not see.

I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.

Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.

I think I hate cynicism more than anything else. It’s the curse of our age, and I want to avoid it at all costs.

The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.

Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.

Physical comforts cannot subdue mental suffering, and if we look closely, we can see that those who have many possessions are not necessarily happy. In fact, being wealthy often brings even more anxiety.

I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.

If you were going to shoot a mime, would you use a silencer?

I take my wife everywhere, but she keeps finding her way back.

I’ve got the brain of a four year old. I’ll bet he was glad to be rid of it.

I went to the bank and asked to borrow a cup of money. They said, ‚What for?‘ I said, ‚I’m going to buy some sugar.‘

Dream and you shall become.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

My parents weren’t actors or studio executives.

One whose knowledge is confined to books and whose wealth is in the possession of others, can use neither his knowledge nor wealth when the need for them arises.