Quotes on Shannon

When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did [Claude Elwood] Shannon in. After information theory, what do you do for an encore? The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right off. And that isn't the way things go. So that is another reason why you find that when you get early recognition it seems to sterilize you.

Molly Shannon and I used to always talk about that we really felt strongly that we were comedic actors, that we weren't comedians. You just played things real and the comedy came out of the context.