Elaine May

“If all of the people who hate 'Ishtar' had seen it, I would be a rich woman today.”

“As a woman, they think I want to show that I'm a nice person. I'm no one to be feared. When it comes down to it in the end, you're just as rotten as any guy. You'll fight just as hard to get your way.”

“We have such respect for the English that, when an Englishman says Hollywood sucks, people listen.”

“The nice thing is to make an audience laugh and laugh and laugh and shudder later.”

“With my addictive personality I'm afraid to start watching a TV series, but I love 'Law & Order' - it's so straightforward and has no plot. It's a real pleasure.”

“Directing is a way of looking at something and then communicating it.”

“Writing is close to acting. In directing, you control. Acting, you can't control how good you are, and you can't control how good you are when you write. You can try to be good. Directing, you can't really control either, but you can think about it.”

“You know, when I was very young, I thought it didn't matter what happened to me when I died, so long as my work was immortal. As I age, I think, Well, perhaps if I had to trade dying right now and being immortal with just living on, I would choose living on. I never thought I would say that. I feel it's so unethical and wrong.”

“I feel in opposition to almost everything.”

“Luck is very strange. I'm lucky in that I met the guy who said, Go to the University of Chicago, and I hitchhiked there.”

“I'll know when I'm successful. That'll be when Safeway cashes my check without identification.”

“Laugh Line' was sort of the way I am at interviews. I could think of nothing.”

“The only successful person in the world is Bing Crosby. I'm sure he'll be working tomorrow, and that's success.”