ALBERT BROOKS

I've been to many funerals of funny people, and they're some of the funniest days you'll ever have, because the emotions run high.

Steven Spielberg seems to have wanted to be a director from 13. He put his dog in a certain position and made him eat at four o'clock. He liked to direct it. But, to me, directing is tedious. Especially if you're acting in it. And I'm inherently lazy.

My mom was a professional. My dad and mom met each other in a movie called 'New Faces of 1937.' My mom went under the name Thelma Leeds, and she did a few movies, and she was really a great singer, and when she married my dad and started to have a family, she sang at parties.

Movies are an expensive business.

Twitter is the Devil's playground.

I'm a member of the Academy, but I don't know who all the other Academy members are. It's not like a politician who knows who is in the Iowa caucus.

I can't not put humor in a book.

I was in Kashmir last weekend. Went to visit one of my sweaters.

When I die, if the word 'thong' appears in the first or second sentence of my obituary, I've screwed up.

As an actor, if you're just sitting and staring and you don't know who you are in your own mind, it's vacant. And sometimes the camera is an X-ray machine, it can pick it up.

You never do a movie and not want it to work. You accept whatever it is. You have to, but nobody in their right mind would not want the movie to be getting talked about at the end of the year.

If I'm going to act in someone's movie, I want the movie to be interesting and be able to get a couple of solid doubles.

One of the things I like about a character: I always think it's fascinating when a character can turn on a dime and go from one emotion to another. I like watching that.

Be generous and you can be the best person who ever lived.

Nobody will leave any place unless they're forced out. That's the nature of humans. Once you're there, you're there. I've never seen anybody get up voluntarily and leave any place.

You know, when cameras are rolling, improvisation doesn't feel natural. The pressure is too great. You're on a time schedule. You've got 60 crewmen.

All improv turns into anger. All comedy improv basically turns into anger, because that's all people know how to do when they're improvising. If you notice shows that are improvising are generally people yelling at each other.

I like movies about failing.

I'm not a big fan of the post-Armageddon stories, where Denzel Washington is walking around in a torn coat.

When I went to acting school, the kids that got the best grades were the kids that could cry on cue. But it didn't really translate into careers for any of them, because the external is the easy part.

I'd still like to see 'Survivor' minus the planned show-biz parts. That would be the purest form of show business - I want to see someone so hungry that they eat somebody else's foot.

I, sort of, got into comedy accidentally, and it got bigger than I wanted it to.

I've always liked to think ahead. Not stupid-far ahead. A hundred years doesn't interest me. But 20 years interests me, and more for what happens to humans as opposed to things.

It's better to be known by six people for something you're proud of than by 60 million for something you're not.

Even though my father was a radio comedian, it wasn't cool to say, at a young age, 'I want to be a comedian.'