There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.

To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it!

A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.

I have learned that only two things are necessary to keep one’s wife happy. First, let her think she’s having her own way. And second, let her have it.

All the songs I write are about human dynamics, whether it’s with girlfriends, boyfriends, or family.

Are you laboring under the impression that I read these memoranda of yours? I can’t even lift them.

If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?

There’s nothing funnier than the human animal.

Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?

An unemployed court jester is nobody’s fool.

Good planning is important. I’ve also regarded a sense of humor as one of the most important things on a big expedition. When you’re in a difficult or dangerous situation, or when you’re depressed about the chances of success, someone who can make you laugh eases the tension.

Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.

I feel upsettingly de-natured. If Penelope Cruz were one of my nurses, I wouldn’t even notice.

There is nothing that makes its way more directly into the soul than beauty.

I think women go crazy for a reason. It’s not like it just happens.

When you look at me, when you think of me, I am in paradise.

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It’s always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.

Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.

The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.

I wanted to be a writer-performer like the Pythons. In fact, I wanted to be John Cleese, and it took me some time to realise that the job was, in fact, taken.

An alcoholic is someone you don’t like who drinks as much as you do.

Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.

Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.

The components of anxiety, stress, fear, and anger do not exist independently of you in the world. They simply do not exist in the physical world, even though we talk about them as if they do.

Sure, I can get a little bit jealous. The good part about jealousy is that it comes from passion. It’s also the dangerous part and it’s an ugly emotion that hurts.

No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.

If you check your ego at the door when it comes to comedy, you’ve got a pretty good shot at making a great movie that you can commit yourself to, you can jump off the proverbial cliff with, and have a great time, and the audiences respond to that.

I’m drawn to bad romances.

People may hear your words, but they feel your attitude.

When the kids are laughing in the audience, I tear up, I’m so happy I did a nice thing.

When I woke up this morning my girlfriend asked me, ‚Did you sleep good?‘ I said ‚No, I made a few mistakes.‘

Cry if you have a compound fracture, by all means. Or if your grandpa died. But otherwise, save it for your pillow.

It takes up enough of my time and interest just working on comedy. I just enjoy it and love doing it.

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.

To wear your heart on your sleeve isn’t a very good plan; you should wear it inside, where it functions best.

When we make progress quickly, it feeds our emotions. Then, when there’s a period of waiting or we hit a plateau, we find out how committed we really are and whether we’re going to see things through to the finish or quit.

No one was more shocked or angry than I was when we didn’t find the weapons. I had a sickening feeling every time I thought about it. I still do.

There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.

Continuous eloquence wearies. Grandeur must be abandoned to be appreciated. Continuity in everything is unpleasant. Cold is agreeable, that we may get warm.

To be honest with you, when I got into this I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

It’s sometimes comical to hear the younger generation ask their peers to repeat themselves.

With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings – words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out.

Those movies sure got me into a rut.

My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.

The ideal death, I think, is what was the ideal Victorian death, you know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

For me, often, there’s such a cloud of melancholia about knowing I’m going to have to leave my daughter on her own. I don’t know what age that is going to be, thank God. It just doubles me up in grief.

But, you know, it’s still a drag to get your picture taken when you’re eating a sandwich. It’s a downer.

A relationship can give you a gut wrenching feeling sometimes. It’s a real emotional ride.

The worst way of flying, I think, is standby. It never works. That’s why they call it standby. You end up standing there going, ‚Bye!‘

You see, you are a spirit, you have a soul, and you live in a body. You have emotions, you have thoughts, you have a will, and you have a conscience. You are a complex being! And Jesus came to heal every single part of you. There’s not one part that He doesn’t want to make completely whole.

A lot of people think I’m a comedian.

It’s probably the worst feeling in the world, when you’re deeply and madly in love with a woman and you know she’s not feeling you the same way, and you don’t know why.

I think in defeat you grope for things that are happy, and it’s hard.

Seeing Pax get extra-nervous about which shirt he is going to wear when he meets Aung San Suu Kyi, I get very moved. He rightfully doesn’t get nervous going to a movie premiere; he gets nervous going to meet her.

I was the first woman to burn my bra – it took the fire department four days to put it out.

Since I was 16, I’ve felt a black cloud hangs over me.

I’m looking for backing for an unauthorized auto-biography that I am writing. Hopefully, this will sell in such huge numbers that I will be able to sue myself for an extraordinary amount of money and finance the film version in which I will play everybody.

The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.