You listen to the audience. The audience is wrong individually and always right collectively. If they don't laugh, it isn't funny. If they cough, it isn't interesting. If they walk out, you are in trouble.

When talking about unicorns, minotaurs, or compassionate conservatives, one does not normally have to prove their non-existence the mere lack of any evidence is sufficient reason not to believe in any of them.

The relationship between an actress and her director is often a very close one.

Hollywood is a cottage industry involving a very small number of people, and around the edges are enormous numbers of people trying to get into it and work.

Disease, a simple famine, plagues of locusts everywhere, or a cataclysmic earthquake, I'd accept with some despair, but no, you sent us Congress! Good God, Sir, was that fair?

I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace, that two are called a law firm, and that three or more become a congress.

It seems to me that everybody who's a success has made a decision to put themselves in a situation that eats away at their privacy. Their hours just don't end. Now, with actors it's extreme, because their privacy is almost nonexistent.

At early previews, the theater gossips are there, wishing you ill every night. They don't grant you any slack. Agents are in from Hollywood. Your friends are there. People who are going to spread the word-of-mouth. If something doesn't work, everyone will know.

Musicals are written and then rewritten. Those things used to happen on the road. Now they are done in New York during preview performances.