Whatever it is that's bothering me - interacting with annoying guy at a restaurant, contemplating my age, or losing friends to illness - I'll start to chip away at it. If you can poke holes in it, it's not as formidable; it's not as scary, and ultimately, it becomes another truth.
Since I got into the movies, 'Running Scared,' that did $40 million. 'Princess Bride,' I got good reviews for the character Miracle Max. 'Memories of Me' didn't do well. 'Throw Mama from the Train' did $70 million. 'Harry and Sally' did 95 or 96. 'City Slickers' did $120 million.
Doing my Broadway show '700 Sundays' reminded me how much I love working in front of an audience.
I have performed my one-man show '700 Sundays' over 400 times now. There were only two times that I can honestly say I was nervous. The first was when I knew Mel Brooks was in the audience, and the second was when Sid Caesar came.
From the first time I saw Sid Caesar be funny I knew that's what I had to do.
The death of Sid Caesar on Wednesday caused a chain reaction in my soon-to-be-66-year-old mind. I was saddened, of course, but felt a sense of relief that he was at last free from the indignity of aging.
In the late 1960s, I was working as an usher for the New York stage production of 'You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown.'
I'd stand on a coffee table, and my cousin Edith would give me dimes, and you put the dimes on your head... And when your forehead was full, show was over.
Only once in a thousand years or so do we get to hear a Mozart or see a Picasso or read a Shakespeare. Ali was one of them, and yet at his heart, he was still a kid from Louisville who ran with the gods and walked with the crippled and smiled at the foolishness of it all.
Believe me, happiness is not ticking off Walter Cronkite.
The decision-making process was very difficult: is this how I want my career to start, with playing Jodie Dallas on this show?
Nobody is more truthful when he's acting than De Niro.
I never felt I had my 15, 16, 17 kind of years the way I maybe should have. It's a huge dent in you that it's hard to knock out and make it all smooth again.
I was a film-directing major at NYU. I'm still not sure why I became a directing major, when I was really an actor and a comedian, but there was something that drew me to doing that.
Nothing takes the sting out of these tough economic times like watching a bunch of millionaires giving golden statues to each other.
Gentlemen, start your egos.
Even when I was in school shows, in elementary school doing plays, I'd always go off book and start improvising.
Time scares me: having enough time to do all the things that I want to do in life, just even in terms of forgetting about the business I'm in.
It took five years to get 'Parental Guidance' made, and it was a fight every second.
I think I've far exceeded what I ever thought I could possibly do.