I chose comedy because I thought it seemed much easier than work. And — Jerry Seinfeld

"When its your name on the goddamn show... the pressure is-- its intense! And then, the show got successful, and everybody expected each week to be even better than the last, and it was a lot of pressure. And I loved every second of it, but it was a lot of pressure and a lot of work, and it was all great, but: never could have accomplished it without [Transcendental Meditation]."

"I was the only guy, by the way, in the early 80s [who] was welcome on your show and Carson; usually, it was kind of-- that was-- there was a bit of a wall there. [...] If you were a Carson comic, you were probably not young enough or cool enough for Late Night. And vice-versa. But I for some reason was able to go back and forth, and I was always very proud of that, in the early days."

"Seems to me the basic conflict between men and women, sexually, is that men are like firemen. To us, sex is an emergency, and no matter what were doing we can be ready in two minutes. Women, on the other hand, are like fire. Theyre very exciting, but the conditions have to be exactly right for it to occur."

"Ive figured out that the "non-event" is the best part of life."

"Do you think if they only made one Hangover -- and didnt make the other two -- it would be considered a comedy classic? Do you think that you destroyed what would have been a comedy classic, by the cash grab of II and III?"

"Men will always say they love women as a group, but somehow seem to be less fond of them as individuals. Women, on the other hand, often appreciate the man theyre with but almost never have anything nice to say about our sex as a group. [...] Women are afraid of men they dont know. Men are afraid of women they know very well."

"I, too, believed it was impossible to change the existing society into one that would be for the benefit of all; neither could I espouse any given ideal for society. But [...] I felt that even if one did not have an ideal vision of society, one could have one’s work to do. Whether it was successful or not was not our concern; it was enough that we believed it to be a valid work. The accomplishment of that work, I believed, was what our real life was about. Yes. I want to carry out a work of my own; for I feel that by so doing our lives are rooted in the here and now, not in some far-off ideal goal."

"Nobody should start to undertake a large project. You start with a small _trivial_ project, and you should never expect it to get large. If you do, youll just overdesign and generally think it is more important than it likely is at that stage. Or worse, you might be scared away by the sheer size of the work you envision. So start small, and think about the details. Dont think about some big picture and fancy design. If it doesnt solve some fairly immediate need, its almost certainly over-designed. And dont expect people to jump in and help you. Thats not how these things work. You need to get something half-way _useful_ first, and then others will say "hey, that _almost_ works for me", and theyll get involved in the project."

"If something seems possible, thats probably because someone is already doing it. When something seems that it cant possibly work, nobody tries it. Real innovation happens when someone tries anyway, overlooking an obvious flaw, and finds a way to make an idea work."

"Without getting complicated let me recapitulate my art training in the following way: the Academy first, the break with the Academy when I hit the Hofmann School which is Cubist. The next real break follows when I see Pollock’s work [1940-41] and once more another transition occurs.. .It was a force [Pollock’s work], a living force, the same sort of thing I responded to in Matisse, in Picasso, in Mondrian. Once more, I was hit that hard with what I saw... I began feeling the need to break with what I was doing and to approach something else."

"Well I think it [a Little Image painting] does suggest hieroglyphics of some sort. It is a preoccupation of mine from way back and every once in a while it comes into my work again. For instance in my 1968 show at the Marlborough I have a painting called Kufic, an ancient form of Arabic writing. Every once in a while I fall back to what I call my mysterious writings. I haven no idea what this is about but it runs through periods of my work."

"Action in its essence, the creative art of a writer of fiction may be compared to rescue work carried out in darkness against cross gusts of wind swaying the action of a great multitude. It is rescue work, this snatching of vanishing phases of turbulence, disguised in fair words, out of the native obscurity into a light where the struggling forms may be seen, seized upon, endowed with the only possible form of permanence in this world of relative values — the permanence of memory."