"A sign that negotiations were handled well on both sides is that everybody probably feels a little bit like they didn't get what they wanted."
"A picador is the guy in a bullfight who helps make sure the matador doesn't get killed by distracting the bull. That's what TV writing is. You're just distracting the bull long enough to stick around for the next set of commercials."
"A lot of things you just stumble into: relationships or ways of putting characters opposite one another that really worked. So then it's not always so much about imitating other people, but imitating yourself, at least in your thinking."
"I tend to avoid things like award shows and panels and interviews, not remotely because I feel I'm above them or wish to cultivate the image of the intriguing recluse. I'm just not very good at them."
"I sense from people that they get frustrated with me for not being out and about. But I guess I'm a shy boy."
"On 'Frasier,' a network executive once suggested that one week we have John Lithgow play Frasier and Kelsey Grammar play Lithgow's role on '3rd Rock From the Sun;' I've been deeply afraid of the idea of a crossover ever since."
"In point of fact, I'm not sure there are too many comedies with laugh tracks anymore. Most of what you hear is live studio audience laughing as a show is filmed. If this prompts you to wonder who those actual human beings are who are laughing at some of this stuff, that is a mystification I share."
"There is certainly a higher percentage of wit in British comedy than in American comedy. What always tickles me is the way in which people try to use their intellect to get themselves out of tricky situations but never quite manage to do so - much to their enormous embarrassment."
"I get asked a lot what the key is to creating a hit show, and I have a standard answer: Do everything right, and then get lucky 10 ways."
"We live in an era now where every episode is reviewed 80 different times on the Internet by periodicals you've never even heard of."
"I like being busy."
"I've worked a lot with kids before. They can be very, very difficult, just because they're kids."
"I turned down a film that was offered to me in the very early '80s, a Scorsese film. That probably wasn't a good career move."
"Eric Stoltz was a very good actor."
"I don't like to repeat myself."
"I'm often asked, 'What was, for you, your greatest film experience?' And it always comes back to 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,' aside from being a film that really handled subject matter in such a brilliant, brilliant way."
"'Hamlet' was the first movie I saw. In 1948, my mother said, 'I'm going to take you to see 'Hamlet' with Laurence Olivier.' She was worried about taking me to it because she wasn't sure I was old enough to understand it or to maybe be adversely affected by it, but I got recordings of it and memorized all the soliloquies."
"Every role I get is always a challenge. I can read a script and say, 'Oh, I can do that!' and then when I start working on it, I suddenly realize that I had no idea what I was getting into. Then I have to really work hard!"
"'Cuckoo's Nest' was my first film, and I had wanted to do film for some time, but somehow I had not clicked. I would go in for interviews or readings, and I never had the sense that I was anywhere near what they were looking for."
"I was already committed to a play back in New York about Hans Christian Andersen, where Colleen Dewhurst was going to play my mother. I was excited about that, and I got this script called 'Back to the Future,' and I thumbed through it. Didn't pay a hell of a lot of attention."
"'Cuckoo's Nest' came along, and I was cast, and that was great, but it was my first film, so I felt like I was kind of walking around on the set as Walk-On A."
"I'm not too picky. I'm not waiting, sitting around for the ideal and perfect role. I like to work, so I try to make the best of whatever opportunity comes up."
"As long as I can keep remembering the lines and getting to the locations, I want to keep working as long as I can. I love it."
"Some people have quick retention. I'm not one of those."
"Time travel is a fantasy we all have. The 'Back to the Future' series really exploits that wish."
