I’m always more motivated by the pain of a funny character than by what makes him funny.

But I didn’t know much about directing a movie.

You know, because of the lack of budget, we had to find neighborhoods where time had stopped – kind of stuck in the ’50s. And no place had that better than Staten Island.

Comedy works best when people recognise themselves.

I’m not a director to make an action or horror film. That’s not for me.

Really, the golden egg of doing a series is that you cross that very stupid bridge that says ‘Name Actors Only’ in casting sessions. All of a sudden, you become a name actor; it gives...

Usually, characters that are doing something nefarious have some extra layers to them. The general rule is bad people don’t necessarily think they are bad.

The pilot of ‘Seinfeld’ was made and dropped. ‘Seinfeld’ was not supposed to go to series.

I can get motivated seeing a kid at my son’s school overcome a learning disability.

Comedy lives on in the web and TV, but nobody’s pressing comedy albums anymore.

I do think that the days of gathering around a television set that functions merely as a television set, to receive a live broadcast of some networked programming, those days are probably numbered.

I am hard-core middle class.

If I could really move my career much more into predominantly directing, I would jump at that.

The downside of being a celebrity is that people kind of know about you, and you really don’t need them to know about you – you need them to know about your work.

I cannot tell people who are struggling that I come first. I just cannot.

Theater is very much the world I’d like to get back to, particularly in New York, both as an actor and director.

Every poker player, like every fisherman, needs to have a story in a box, and most poker stories are completely uninteresting.

Directors get to fire on many more cylinders than an actor.

I had gone to the doctor. The doctor said, ‘You’re healthy as a horse. You’ve got two weight problems – two health problems because of your weight. Please do something.’

I think with challenge comes a little more fun.

Is it my end-all and be-all to become a standup comic? No.

The Middle East is a very difficult stage to play upon. Without doubt, it is a good drama. And on occasion, there are situations so unimaginable, if not ludicrous, as to make them almost comic....

I find when somebody says to me, ‘I’m going to motivate you,’ more often than not, they’re not going to get me.

Well, let’s put in this way, I grew up in West New York, New Jersey.

Many people don’t know our famous ‘soup kitchen’ episode on Seinfeld was inspired by an actual soup restaurant off 8th Avenue in New York.

Do people absolutely need the arts to get by day-to-day? You can make that claim, but they also really need a lot of things before that.

I have actually lost a couple of roles – film roles – because a director or producer thought I looked too much like George Costanza, and I could not get out of that box.

I’m a singer and performer in a hybrid show that’s standup, music and audience participation.

Isn’t it time you came out and told the world what you believe?

The world of the stage and the performance on the stage usually does not tend to translate very well – it doesn’t tend to hold very well – once cameras are on it; it’s not...

Do you want to have a career that goes beyond, you know, 11 minutes in a 22-minute television show every week? Some people don’t. That’s fine.

What is it about Iowa? I’m the shortest guy in the state.

Television, in particular, doesn’t look for talent; it looks for personas. You have a great persona? You can be a TV star.

I have always wanted to play Sweeney in ‘Sweeney Todd.’

I met the real George Steinbrenner on only one occasion when he actually came and played himself on an episode of ‘Seinfeld.’ He seemed to really enjoy himself. I did not get to know him,...

One of the downsides of being a poker pro is that people see exactly how you play.

Jerry Seinfeld has an interesting theory. He goes, ’20 pounds up or down, and you lose your funny.’

There are always things that I’d love to do. As an actor, none of them are specific; all I’m looking for are things that are good quality, that are challenging for me to work on,...

I guess the Reagan era is defined as the ‘I want it all for me, and screw everybody else’ era.

What you find with singers, no matter where they’re from, if they have any kind of an accent, the accent tends to disappear when they sing.

The show is like an Edwardian play – emotional life gets stepped on for the sake of accepted manners, and that’s terrific for actors to play in.

I have no illusions about having another ‘Seinfeld’ in my life.

I was the teenage kid growing up in New Jersey watching the Tony Awards and thinking, ‘Oh, maybe if I’m lucky I’ll make it to Broadway by the time I’m 40!’

We made a deal that was acceptable to us. We got paid very handsomely for our final season.

Jerry Seinfeld made a puddle, I stepped in it, and wonderful things happened.

We see and hear about Israelis and Palestinians only when they are defined by the global media as ‘occupiers,’ ‘terrorists,’ and ‘victims.’ But we forget that they are fathers and mothers and sons and daughters...

I love smart comedy.

Where are reliable journalism and reliable investigative voices going to come from? I love the days of old – the Walter Cronkites, the Dan Rathers.

There is no community service in ‘Seinfeld.’ But rather than lauding that, I think it shows the insane banality of it.

I started balding at age 17 and after first being sad, I really embraced it.