An egg cream can do anything. An egg cream to a Brooklyn Jew is like water to an Arab. A Jew will kill for an egg cream. It’s the Jewish malmsey.
I don’t believe in this business of being behind, better to be in front.
I love gentiles. In fact, on of my favorite activities is Protestant spotting.
When I was a little kid at home, I thought the whole world was Jewish. For years I thought Roosevelt was Jewish. I loved him. I thought of him as my father. I’m always stunned when I find out that people like Roosevelt and Tolstoy weren’t Jewish. How could I love them so much?
I was out in the combat engineers. We would throw up bridges in advance of the infantry but mainly we would just throw up.
Tragedy is what happens to me; comedy is what happens to you.
All short women have a delayed fuse. Marry a taller woman: My wife was an inch or two taller than me; it’s a sign of security.
Good taste is the enemy of comedy.
Usually when a lot of men get together, it’s called a war.
The audience got jaded, they want a hit, they want a big success, and so you don’t want to experiment because you say, well, I’ll disappoint the audience, they may not like it, I better do something that I think is more commercial.
Writing is simply one thought after another dying upon the one before.
Some critics are emotionally desiccated, personally about as attractive as a year-old peach in a single girl’s refrigerator.
It would be hypocritical of me to take issue with anything in questionable taste, seeing that I invented bad taste in films.
Immortality is a by-product of good work. Masterpieces are not for artists, they’re for critics. Critics can’t even make music by rubbing their back legs together. My message to the world is ‘Let’s swing, sing, shout, make noise! Let’s not mimic death before our time comes! Let’s be wet and noisy!’
I realised that all one really had to do was just observe. Observe and slightly exaggerate, and you had comedy. Instead of creating a mythical premise for a stupid joke, I found playing off truth got the best result.
You’re young forever when you write. Alfred Hitchcock directed until the day he died. As long as you don’t have any dementia or Alzheimer’s, if you have your All-Bran every day and clear yourself out, I think your brains are gonna be all right.
There’s no such thing as too far. If it works it’s funny, if it doesn’t work it’s too far, it’s stupid. Really there’s no such thing as “too far.” You’re joining the politically correct when you use words like “too far.” You don’t want to join the army of politically correct.
Being short never bothered me for three seconds. The rest of the time I wanted to commit suicide.
I was in the army, and to me it was like a newsreel.
Tolstoy was the most gifted writer who ever lived. It’s like he stuck a pen in his heart and it didn’t even go through his mind on its way to the page.