I had to paraphrase the paraphrase.
I met Richard Pryor for the first time in Calgary, in Canada. A very quiet, modest meeting.
I don't mean to sound - I don't want it to come out funny, but I don't like show business. I love - I love acting in films. I love it.
When your mother gives you confidence about anything that you do, you carry that confidence with you. She made me believe that I could make someone laugh.
I like - it's not that I want to be someone different from me, but I suppose it partly is that. I love creating a character in a fantastical situation, like Dr. Frankenstein, like Leo Bloom, a little caterpillar who blossoms into a butterfly. I love that.
I'd like to do a comedy with Emma Thompson. I admire her as an actress so much. I love her. And I didn't know it until recently that her whole career started in comedy.
I wanted to be an actor. Maybe a comic actor, but an actor. That's what got me into acting was putting on an act, because in life, I wasn't funny and I felt on stage or in the movies, I could do whatever I wanted to. I was free.
The boss inspires fear; the leader inspires enthusiasm. The boss says 'I'; The leader says 'We'.
Her eyes were distant, and she seemed to be listening to that voice that first told her the story, a mother, sister, or aunt. Then her voice, like her singing, cut through the crickets and crackling fire.
Will Rogers used to say he wouldn't run for president no matter how badly the country needed a comedian.
No one likes having offended another person; hence everyone feels so much better if the other person doesn't show he's been offended. Nobody likes being confronted by a wounded spaniel. Remember that. It is much easier patiently - and tolerantly - to avoid the person you have injured than to approach him as a friend. You need courage for that.