The reason I work with the same people, it's not just an accident.

Ninety-nine percent of television shows, I've never seen.

I watch mostly documentaries and things that aren't remotely funny.

I read kind of serious books about fairly arcane subjects.

People ask me, 'What's your next film?' And I never know.

I've been buying guitars since 1964, and you fool yourself into thinking it's the last one.

I'm fascinated by real-time behavior.

When you hear someone talking in a restaurant or overhear someone talking on the street, there are very different patterns of conversation than you would hear in a conventional movie.

I've been fortunate. I get to write films. I get to write music in films. I get to play arenas wearing a wig.

I started on the clarinet. I was going to a music school - my mother took me - and the guy said, 'What do you want to play?' I said the drums, and my mother said, 'No, you don't. You don't want to play the drums.' So I said, 'Maybe the trumpet would be cool.' And my mother said, 'I don't think so.' And then the clarinet was handed to me.

It couldn't have been more nerdy or bizarre, playing the clarinet. But I studied classical clarinet, went to the high school for music and art in New York City, and then found the guitar and the mandolin after it.

When you've been a character in a movie - and this has happened when we've done concerts as Spinal Tap or as The Folksmen - people see you as characters walking out of a movie. And you appear in public, then, to play, it's a very schizophrenic thing.

I don't read anything about my movies before or after I do films, or any part of show business. I think that keeps me in a kind of place where I can do the work that I need to do.

I wouldn't say I'm a connoisseur of film. I like certain films, but I don't pretend to be a connoisseur of films, no.

My passion is more specific, in the sense that I've always liked doing comedy. I've always liked doing music. I like acting. And apparently, you need those things in movies.

I don't think we've ever known what the hell's going on when we do Tap shows. It's possible the audience are effectively getting to see more of the movie when we play. You know, they know the songs, so anything we do onstage, whether we're meaning to or not, is an extension of the film. Other than that, I wouldn't understand what's going on.

If you're deluded, you live in a place where there isn't everyone else's reality.

You can't improvise without a skeletal structure; you can't just go in and start talking. This is a very misunderstood craft because no one else makes movies like this.

I like to play music, and I like to be funny, so I just do both at the same time.

Music means a great deal to me.

I love being with my family and just being a regular person.

We heard about people who went backstage at dog shows with scissors and cut parts of a poodle's hair off to sabotage the dog.

When I look back on what I've done, I think I'm drawn to obsession, perhaps.

I would overhear these conversations of people who show purebred dogs. They spoke about them as if they were their children.

If you don't like the people, you're just doing a sketch. Which, in most cases, is comedy minus some emotional backbone.

I was never in an improv group. But when I went to school, we would do it all day long with friends, not knowing what it was called.

What interests me most are the emotional lives of the people. If I don't have that, it's not worth doing, frankly.

Nothing is cut while I'm shooting. I edit between nine months and a year, and usually have around 80 hours of footage I have to get down to an 82-minute movie.

I haven't had to do anything outside of show business my whole life. I've never been a waiter. I've only worked and gotten paid. It hasn't been a classic example of someone slogging through the business.

I started working in New York City as an actor and did many plays. I did regional theater, smaller theaters, children's theater.

I didn't go to film school. I had been an actor in movies, I had been in plays, and then I just sort of jumped into it.

If you're showing people where it's smooth sailing, where is the joke? If you go back to any movie, even a conventional movie, with any comedians, they're either not terribly intelligent or they're not doing something well.

I love documentaries. My problem is when the filmmaker becomes the star.

I've never seen a reality show. I don't watch television.

The fun part about doing our movies is that you're creating something using the talents of people rather than finding these pathetic people who are thrust into these situations. That, to me, is completely artless.

I find it really appalling when people talk about comedy.

It's difficult to articulate how I know it's the right actor, but I do. It's instinct. Intuition.

My daughter recommended Chris O'Dowd to me after seeing him in 'Bridesmaids,' so I watched that and his sitcom, 'The IT Crowd.' When I was over in London, we met up, and I knew immediately he was the right person.

I would make a huge distinction between theater improvisation and film improvisation.

There isn't much improvisation in film - there's virtually none. The people that theoretically could be good at this in a theater situation don't necessarily do this in a film in a way that will work, because it's much broader on a stage.

The truth of it is that people are not going to want to go to improvisational theater if it's not funny. You can succeed in doing all the things you're supposed to do - be truthful to scene - and if it's not funny, I'm telling you that no one's gonna care.

In the kind of films that I do, there is an extremely limited number of people that can improvise. The reason the ensemble continues in the movies is because those are the people that can do that kind of work. It's not just an accident those people are in the film.

Mean doesn't last. Mean is over fast. Maybe this is the essence of everything, which is, to me, if there is no emotional center for what I'm doing, I have no interest in it at all.

To me, what I realized when we were doing 'Spinal Tap' - and the four of us wrote that - is, really, the core of that is the relationship with the two guys who grew up together and that strain when the girlfriend comes in. If that wasn't there, it's a very different movie. Then it's just bumbling guys stumbling along.

I'm drawn as well to the lower echelons of things because it struck me a long time ago that it didn't really matter on what level people were working on anything; it was just as important to them as the people working on what's perceived as a higher level.

I think fans are so brought up in a culture of rooting for a team since they were kids, ostensibly, and are blind to this idea that people might take offense.

I don't do any editing while we're making the movie. I sit down and watch it all with my editor, we make longhand notes on pads, and then we begin our work.

The main thing that's important to me is getting to do whatever project it is the way that I do what I do, and that's different. To go to an entity - whether it's a traditional film studio or some newer company, or HBO, Amazon or Netflix - they would have to know that I need to work the way I work.

I myself delve into very arcane things.

I knew Dave Raymond, who was the original Phillie Phanatic.