You can't be funny for funny's sake. You try to get as outrageous situation as you can but it always has to be believable and based in real character motivations and what people would really do.
What's great about having an audience is they can let you know what they don't think is funny, and you can just cut that out and keep trying.
I believe that if life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade... And try to find somebody whose life has given them vodka, and have a party.
I'm definitely guilty of thinking something is funny but thinking the audience won't. Then three years later I will finally try it and it'll kill them. I got to give them more credit.
Yes, I have my standpoint, but I try to follow the life of Christ and he was very non-judgmental. It's not my position to judge. It's God's position to judge.
When trying to remember my share in the glow of the eternal present, in the smile of God, I return to my childhood, too, for that is where the most significant discoveries turn up.
Back in the 1980s, when I was a lowly editorial assistant by day and trying to be a novelist by night, no god reigned so supreme as the god of literary prose.
'Thou shalt not get found out' is not one of God's commandments; and no man can be saved by trying to keep it.
You can't get around pain and opposition, but you can try to be joyful in the trial, and thank yourself for the trial, and thank God for the strength to get through it.
Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong.
The leadership lost its nerve. Instead of taking the lead in the reform movement... they pulled the plug on it. They tried and are still trying to return the church to the dry ice of the previous century and a half.
At the end the day because I believe so strongly in leadership, what I look for first, what I try to assess, is integrity.
The Washington leadership has put aside non-proliferation programmes and devoted its energies and resources to driving the country to war by extraordinary deceit, then trying to manage the catastrophe it created in Iraq.
Nobody in a leadership level in American politics is trying to inspire the American people. Everybody needs to be goosed. The vast majority of people are not self-starters.
I, talking about my children, of course I wanted them to succeed in life, they have to choose whatever job or occupation that they want, I will not try to influence.
I don't even draw on my life experiences when I'm acting. I just try and make it feel like I'm living through that person's skin.
There is only one way in which one can endure man's inhumanity to man and that is to try, in one's own life, to exemplify man's humanity to man.
I see my job as being to facilitate the life of clinical researchers so that they can be more productive, and trying to keep the bureaucracy from getting in their way.
The problem in Hollywood is that they try to become the only kind of cinema in the world, okay? The imposition everywhere of a unique culture, which is Hollywood culture, and a unique way of life, which is the American way of life.
I can only say that in life when you have the greatest expectations and you try to do things the right way, it doesn't always work out.
Listen to the lyrics - we're singing about everyday life: rich people trying to keep money, poor people tying to get it, and everyone having trouble with their husband or wife!
