[C. Montgomery] Burns is much purer evil than Nixon was. I think it's the purity of his evil that attracts me as a comic character..

I am one of those people who thrive on deadlines. Nothing brings on inspiration more readily than desperation..

I went to graduate school at Harvard for one year I worked in the state legislature in Sacramento for one year. I taught school in Compton for two ye….

If Nixon were a Republican senator today, he would have been primaried out..

I happened upon a memoir by a midlevel White House staffer, and he had been in the room that [Nixon's last] night [in office]. This guy's memoir told….

I've got an odd, negative bond with C. Montgomery Burns. He reminds a lot of people of bosses they've worked for. He certainly reminds me of someone ….

Even under the best of circumstances men are hard creatures to trap. Women who flatter themselves into thinking they've trapped one are like people w….

Well I directed a few feature length things for HBO in the late eighties..

The last president we had was the smartest guy anyone could remember and he did the dumbest thing anyone has ever seen in the White House so go figur….

To do then now would be retro. To do then then was very now-tro, if you will..

I think the British learn their history through the prism of this gallery of grotesques known as the royals..

Music often happens even faster than comedy in terms of the creation..

The hardest work most of us do is maintaining the appearance of normality..

You're not just looking for laughs, but you're trying to do the characters first, and then the laughs come afterwards..

When Nixon died, on my radio show I started doing sketches with three basic conceits: One, there's a place called Heaven. Two, Nixon got in. And thre….

My parents didn't want me to be a regular in a series. I was a working actor from time to time but they thought was a little too much being a star of….

I've been doing Nixon pretty much my whole professional life. I was in this comedy group called the Credibility Gap in Los Angeles when he was presid….

Democrats always like to brag that their guys are smarter than the opponents and Republicans always like to brag that their guys are more moral than ….

Here's a guy [Richard Nixon] who had no gift for small talk, never liked to be around strangers, was physically awkward, and he goes into the one bus….

For a guy who is always banging on about the masculine virtues, Nixon had this remarkable proclivity for very dainty gestures..

I think in most cases, if you're with good people, comedy creation happens faster in collaboration. That's how I can tell if it's a good collaboratio….