True kindness is not necessarily giving something to someone who is down, but showing them that they still have something to give to get back up.
I was that kind of tired you feel when you’ve spent a day in a hospital while a loved one undergoes surgery and comes through all right, the loved one, of course, being myself, and Christmas being the surgical procedure.
I’m the kind of guy who turns my fan on in winter, only to then go and add another blanket on top of my bed. I practice inefficiency even while I sleep, so I’ll be prepared to one day be a politician.
A million years is a short time - the shortest worth messing with for most problems. You begin tuning your mind to a time scale that is the planet's time scale. For me, it is almost unconscious now and is a kind of companionship with the earth.
Simi? What was it you told me once about families? We have three kinds of family. Those we are born to, those who are born to us, and those we let into our hearts.
Indeed this gentleman's stoicism was of that not uncommon kind, which enables a man to bear with exemplary fortitude the afflictions of his friends, but renders him, by way of counterpoise, rather selfish and sensitive in respect of any that happen t...
As an improviser, I always find it jarring when I meet someone in real life whose first answer is no. “No, we can’t do that.” “No, that’s not in the budget.” “No, I will not hold your hand for a dollar.” What kind of way is that to li...
A physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mental excess. The process, it seemed, was reversible. Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of ascetici...
How we treat one another matters, and not just in a "it's nice to be nice" kind of way: our behavior contributes to an environment that encourages some opportunities and hinders others.
Animals have a much better attitude to life and death than we do. They know when their time has come. We are the ones that suffer when they pass, but it's a healing kind of grief that enables us to deal with other griefs that are not so easy to grab ...
I saw 'Taxi Driver,' and 'Taxi Driver' kind of saved my life. The scene where Robert De Niro is looking at himself in the mirror saying, 'You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? Who the hell else are you talkin' to?' That's the scene that changed my li...
I did standup for a lot of years, too, but when you come out as a standup, you get the feeling from a crowd - it's a kind of a 'make me laugh' attitude. But when you come out as an improvisor, they realize that they're suggesting everything you do. S...
I think 'Gatsby' is hobbled, in part, by its status as a Great American Novel. People kind of roll their eyes before they've even opened it, treat it with a 'been there, done that' attitude. I know I did. It took me years to re-open the novel and see...
I didn't have a teen age at all. I didn't even look at boys, never mind... then suddenly it was like, 'Oh my god!' So I made up for a lot of lost time very quickly. It was kind of bonkers. Working hard, partying hard - but also experiencing life, you...
Age, style, where you come from, where you were born, it's different every time, which, to me, is refreshing because it says that there isn't any one thing, one formula or kind of character that makes a great comedian. Everybody has had a different a...
A lot of the time with child actors, you get the feeling they're trying to have a kind of poise or presentation that's beyond their years that might be put on, but also might be because they've spent years just hanging out with adults and they don't ...
I want to play women my own age, rather than artificially 'de-age' myself so that I can play women who are younger or much younger than I am. I want to grow into those kind of more mature parts, not try and keep them at bay for as long as I possibly ...
I am firmly of the opinion that women who make a lot of effort to hang onto their looks in middle age (unless they are beauties, entertainers or prostitutes) are rather sad, as one should surely have something more substantial to recommend one by thi...
My mother was a P.E. teacher, and she was kind of a fanatic about fitness and nutrition growing up, so it was ingrained in me at a young age. As I get older, I'm finding out it's not about getting all buffed up and looking good. It's more about stayi...
A glance at the history of European poetry is enough to inform us that rhyme itself is not indispensable. Latin poetry in the classical age had no use for it, and the kind of Latin poetry that does rhyme - as for instance the medieval 'Carmina Burana...
I made about fifty-four dollars a week and spent it on two flying lessons every week at the age of sixteen and was able to get a license then pretty early and knew that that's what I wanted to do, some kind of a career in aviation. I did know about s...
