Back in the fifties (the nineteen fifties, not the eighteen fifties) I did some writing for Mad Magazine, along with my friend Ernie Kovaks and a pair of comics named Bob and Ray.

A lot of people didn't know I was doing Broadway. They thought I was one of those guys who was famous for being famous. I was the one who sat next to Charles Nelson Reilly and said funny things.

I'm not a pessimist. I do believe that in some way we don't understand, God has a hand in things and it will all work out for America. Our money says In God We Trust. And we are the best country, aren't we?

Children can become self-reliant and self-disciplined by being free to do what they want to do.

I made up my mind I was going to walk that thin line between fame and oblivion.

I didn't want to be famous for its own sake. I wanted to be famous so as to be happy.

For most of my life I didn't believe in God. Who had time?

What I learned at home was despair and hopelessness. What I learned at the pictures was don't give up the ship, we have only begun to fight, it's always darkest before the dawn.

The only real benefit of being famous is being recognized by head waiters and getting good tables at restaurants. The rest is part ego trip and part inconvenience.

When I grew up, which was really in the 30s and the 40s, the movies were a moral guideline for me.

I paid a price for being on game shows and that was not being taken seriously. But so what? I did what I did and I was glad. But it's a strange form of immortality.

Well, I haven't done that many movies, but the best one was 'Being John Malkovich.'

The nineteen fifties was a time of tumultuous change.

One of the things I'm proudest of, one year on my refrigerator, I taped a Christmas card from the Republican National Committee and season's greetings from Gus Hall of the American Communist Party. They both stayed up their months and I'm proud of it.

You know when I was a kid, I hated every day I was in school, from the kindergarten right through to my last day of high school.

TV and film are always slipping in political messages, not ones designed to bring us together but to divide us.

I never thought that I couldn't do what I set out to do. It wasn't from arrogance; it was from ignorance.

I think it was a miracle that Trump got elected.

I don't expect to be another Walt Disney, but I do get a terrific bang out of being able to say things with pictures. Maybe that means something deep and profound about me - but I doubt it.

I had come to New York seeking my fortune after a few years of honing my craft as a stand-up on the road.

I knew people who were real Communists but never made it onto the blacklist and kept on working. There were also people reputed to be Communists who weren't.

Part of me is nonhuman and eccentric, which is what a hobbit is, and I don't mind being eccentric.

Possessions can possess you. Even a lawn can possess you. It makes you buy a garden hose. Which makes you water. Which cuts into time you might be happier spending some other way.

Back in the fifties I was the hot, young comic on CBS and a regular on 'The Ed Sullivan Show.' I was also starring in shows on Broadway and acting in dramatic programs on television. Those were the glory days of television. It was like theater. It was live. If an actor forgot a line, he improvised. There was an immediacy to it.

The reason I became a Christian is the same reason I became a conservative: I paid attention.

Even I get fan mail.

I adored my mother. She was beautiful, smart, sexy and funny.

I make more than a handsome living doing voices for commercials; I hear myself all day on the tube.

Every restaurant in the world is owned by a Greek.

What is it with me? I seem to be an incorrigible black-listee.

I think America was a miracle. I think God loves this country.

It's funny, I never watch TV. I watch Fox News.

I always identified with Frankenstein because as a kid, I never got the girl.

I certainly have no plans to quit the United States.

I don't think that the theater should necessarily pay.

I love Spike Jonze. He's brilliant.

I just feel lucky; I just feel happy to be alive.

I didn't use a voice change to do Bilbo. I have a distinctive voice anyway. I did an attitude change, making Bilbo kind of fussy - fussy and proper - then gradually dropped the fussiness and properness as the madness of battle really affects him.

Men are attracted to youth and beauty; women are attracted to power.

I felt only a conservative president could bring peace in Vietnam 'cause he wouldn't be accused of being soft on communism.

I'm greedy for experience. I keep finding new things.

In the long period of time when I did talk shows and game shows, a whole new generation of people came along who thought of me as that, and not as a theater person.

I've made a lot of dumb mistakes, but I don't regret them at all.

I think of my life as a cheap novel. Part of you wants it to go on forever, and part of you wants to see how it comes out.

I'm thankful I've learned to embrace insecurity, not just to tolerate it. Life is more fun that way, and I'm thankful for that, too.

I am dedicated to giving my kids the memory of happy parents. So I spend a lot of time with them. We really know each other. If they should decide later on that they hate me, at least they'll know who they're hating.

I don't spend my life making money to spend tomorrow, or to acquire possessions.

Until I read Neill's book, 'Summerhill,' I thought there were only two ways to bring up children, either with authoritarian discipline or with permissiveness. Either way, hopefully, applied with love. Now I know there is a third way: teaching a child self*regulation, not by coercion or by abandoning discipline, but by freedom with responsibility.

Whatever else it was about, the feminist movement had no interest in exploding the myth of the mysterious and wonderful world of business; it simply wanted in on it.

My wife and I sold our house New York and moved to Australia for a year; then we came back and spent almost three years bumming around the country in an old '61 VW van. We put the kids in school wherever we happened to be, but mainly we reveled in being rootless.