Billy Crystal
It took five years to get 'Parental Guidance' made, and it was a fight every second.
That's the thing that I'm really most proud of: that I'm still... people still would like to see me. I love seeing them.
I'm proud that I have done so many different kinds of things and maintained an amazing family. And I think that's the joy: that I've been able to have everything.
Two things I really wanted to be: a stand-up comic or a New York Yankee - or a really funny New York Yankee.
I've never looked at - with the exception of little snippets - very much of anything I've done in the last 15, 20 years.
As I sit here writing and look across the room at Janice, I keep thinking of the most heartbreaking question: which of us will go first?
I can't bear to think of life without Janice. I want to go first because I don't want to miss her, because that would be a pain far worse than any death.
One night, I wrote down all the things I was waiting to do with my little granddaughter, and it became a book, 'I Already Know I Love You.' It was one of those really lovely things in life.
My girls turned out great.
I think it's like a relay race. You run, and you hand over the baton, and your kids pick it up. They take the stuff they want, throw the rest away, and keep running. That's what life is about.
The decision-making process was very difficult: is this how I want my career to start, with playing Jodie Dallas on this show?
Your first friends are your truest friends, I find. And the ones that stick are really special.
No disrespect to Sweden: I didn't think of them as the comedy universe.
When you're the host of the Academy Awards, and you grew up watching Bob Hope and Johnny Carson, and now it's your turn, and you get a chance to run with the baton on the relay for a while, I really embraced it and just really loved being there.
I was a good baseball player. I still play a couple of times a week as part of my daily workout. Just throwing the ball, running around, fielding ground balls, you know. It's better to me than being on a treadmill or some sort of Zumba class.
When I first started, there were, like... two or three critics that you thought, 'Alright, I hope I get a good review from them.' And now there's millions of them.
I started writing in 1948 - basically.
What's so fascinating and frustrating and great about life is that you're constantly starting over, all the time, and I love that.
My Aunt Sheila was terrifying! She would put a napkin in her mouth and say, 'You've got something on your face, dear. Let me just scratch that off your face. Let me sand your cheek.'
The Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower. They're monumental. They're straight out of Page 52 in your school history book.
I have performed my one-man show '700 Sundays' over 400 times now. There were only two times that I can honestly say I was nervous. The first was when I knew Mel Brooks was in the audience, and the second was when Sid Caesar came.
Ali forced us to take a look at ourselves. This brash young man who thrilled us, angered us, confused and challenged us, ultimately became a silent messenger of peace who taught us that life is best when you build bridges between people, not walls.
Doing my Broadway show '700 Sundays' reminded me how much I love working in front of an audience.
Only once in a thousand years or so do we get to hear a Mozart or see a Picasso or read a Shakespeare. Ali was one of them, and yet at his heart, he was still a kid from Louisville who ran with the gods and walked with the crippled and smiled at the foolishness of it all.
We're seeing this disintegration of the family movie into these blockbuster things that kids should not be exposed to with explosions, carnage and violence.
Nothing takes the sting out of these tough economic times like watching a bunch of millionaires giving golden statues to each other.
Your success is in your point of view. It's your life that you're talking about; it's your observations. That's the best lesson that I ever had.
I was a per diem floater in the same junior high school I went to. I sat in the office and made $42.50 a day, and whenever a teacher was absent, I'd substitute. I taught everything from English to auto shop.
I've known Kareem since I was kid. He lived in Manhattan, but my best friend used to go to high school with him, and he was in my house the day I graduated from high school in 1965.
Losing my parents, who I admired, loved and needed, it took a long time to be able to move on.
I'm a baby. I sleep like a baby - I'm up every two hours. And I think a lot. I worry a lot. I have great nights of no sleep where ideas come.
A laugh is a weird sound, and when you get a couple thousand people making it at once, it's really strange. But when I can feel proud of myself for causing it, it's great.
You really have to have some muscle to be on the stage in front of the world.
When you're 65, you're surprised by what turns you on.
When I was growing up in the house, we'd watch the Oscars.
Dad had a music store, and he'd often bring home comedy albums that I would listen to. I started listening to Bob Newhart and Bill Cosby, and developing taste. They really influenced my style of comedy.
Well, the way things are going, aside from wheat and auto parts, America's biggest export is now the Oscar.
That's the thing about jazz: it's free flowing, it comes from your soul.
Even when I was in school shows, in elementary school doing plays, I'd always go off book and start improvising.
Bambi, to a kid, was scary.
To be good, you need to believe in what you're doing.
Nobody is more truthful when he's acting than De Niro.
I can't be funny if my feet don't feel right.
Gentlemen, start your egos.
I'm comfortable being old... being black... being Jewish.
My granddaughter's birth has made me want to create things she will love.
From the first time I saw Sid Caesar be funny I knew that's what I had to do.
At 60, I could do the same things I could do at 30, if I could only remember what those things are.
I'd like to think there is a Heaven, and it starts from the happiest day in your life.