What I can't completely understand is most other people's fascination with what the famous among us do with their lips and the rest of their bodies. Why do ordinary people become the target of this curiosity simply by virtue of the fact that other people recognise their names and faces but know almost nothing else about them?

It isn't necessary to be rich and famous to be happy. It's only necessary to be rich.

I fix my grandchildren's computers.

I had never really wanted to be famous. Everyone is supposed to want to be rich and famous, but as a boy I never knew what rich was, and the first view I had of famous made me leery.

Be as smart as you can, but remember that it is always better to be wise than to be smart.

Why would you give money to somebody whose work you don't understand?

When I was about ten years old, I gave my teacher an April Fool's sandwich, which had a dead goldfish in it.

If I can't get the girl, at least give me more money.

I'm an angry person, angrier than most people would imagine, I get flashes of anger. What works for me is working out when it's useful to use that anger.

It's a funny feeling to work with people who you consider your colleagues and to realize that they actually are young enough to be your children.

Achingly funny as it was, Larry Gelbart's writing gave off sparks that turned a hard light on the way we are.

You can't get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you're doing. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover will be yourself.

Be brave enough to live life creatively. The creative place where no one else has ever been.

I love oatmeal. To me, it's not boring. I agree that ordinary oatmeal is very boring, but not the steel-cut Irish kind - the kind that pops in your mouth when you bite into it in little glorious bursts like a sort of gummy champagne.