Christopher Guest

“I like to play music, and I like to be funny, so I just do both at the same time.”

“I find it really appalling when people talk about comedy.”

“I love documentaries. My problem is when the filmmaker becomes the star.”

“When I look back on what I've done, I think I'm drawn to obsession, perhaps.”

“If you didn't know who I was, if I was to walk out on the street without people knowing who I am, you'd think I'm an accountant or a lawyer.”

“I went to Bard College for a year. And then, even though I didn't think I should give my blood to the theater, I did go to N.Y.U., which is where I met Michael McKean.”

“The early parodies that talk-show people did of rock n' roll in the '50s were terrible. They didn't know it, they didn't like it - and that's a lethal combination.”

“Ninety-nine percent of television shows, I've never seen.”

“With a documentary, you can cut away, you can do jump cuts, cut to a photograph at any point to bridge two scenes.”

“Comedies don't get nominated for Oscars. It doesn't happen. So when we set out to do a movie, it's not what we're thinking about.”

“If you're deluded, you live in a place where there isn't everyone else's reality.”

“I knew Dave Raymond, who was the original Phillie Phanatic.”

“In 'Spinal Tap,' there's the fake historical quality of 'Stonehenge.' It's something the musicians look at with a mystical reverence. In folk music, it's the seriousness with which these people approach their 'art.'”

“You know it's important to have a Jeep in Los Angeles. That front wheel drive is crucial when it starts to snow on Rodeo Drive.”

“Comedy is like music. You have to know the key and you have to find players with good chops.”

“You know when you're young, you have this unbelievable stupidity and arrogance and ignorance all mixed in?”

“I don't read anything about my movies before or after I do films, or any part of show business. I think that keeps me in a kind of place where I can do the work that I need to do.”

“Most films, when you finish as an actor, you just go home.”

“Strangely enough, among my dad's things, I found the diary of an ancestor who was born in 1797 and became a ventriloquist in London. That was quite chilling. It described exactly how I was as a child but 150 years earlier - doing voices, pretending to be a ventriloquist.”

“People want me to be funny all the time. They think I'm being funny no matter what I say or do and that's not the case.”