Quotes

She's like jazz. She created her own beat. - friend and fellow comedian Paul Mooney

I think people are a little bit intimidated by me. You know, I'm not exactly a wilting flower, so I think they're a little bit scared of me sometimes.

My father was a proctologist and my mother was an abstract artist, so that's how I view the world.

I'm the only actress in Hollywood who didn't pay to have these lips.

I think [comedy] is definitely a more male oriented field--social commentary, political commentary--I think it's just easier for men to get up and say whatever they want. But I don't think there's that many women who really want to put their toe in the water either. It's not the easiest life or lifestyle to get out there and kind of shake the s*** up.

I tend to go against the grain because when I start to see that everybody's trying to shock, I try not to. I just do stuff that's subtler, more emotional, and I think that shocks people.

My family wasn't the Brady Bunch. They were the Broody Bunch.

[1992, on seeing someone hawking, coughing and spitting loudly] That kind of stuff makes me laugh. Sick human beings, weird human beings, ya know?

[on Jerry Lewis and The King of Comedy (1982)]: It was fabulous. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life. I learned so much from everybody on that film, including Jerry. Is he easy to get along with? No. Is he notoriously crank and misogynistic? Yes. But that doesn't mean you don't have a great experience in spite of people's limitations. It was incredible.

Paranoia is a full-time job.

[on The King of Comedy (1982)] I haven't seen the movie in a long time. How many times can you watch yourself, you know? It's uncomfortable. I am curious to see it again all cleaned up and restored. The film was so representative of an era in filmmaking when people would take their time in a scene. It wasn't a case of rush, rush, rush onto the next moment. You had room to breathe, and I think that in itself made people uncomfortable because the topic was so weird and out of left field at the time. Now, expectations of fame and desire run so extreme that the film almost seems tame in comparison, but there's still something about The King of Comedy (1982) that's very disarming and offbeat and something you'll never see again. And so those are the emotions I feel. It was very evocative.

[on the possibility of remaking The King of Comedy (1982)] No way. At one point, Jack Black wanted to remake it, and I was like - I mean I love him, he's fabulous, don't get me wrong, but I don't think it would have worked. It's too late to remake it. We're here and there's nothing to really predict. It's just an ongoing conversation you have every day of the week like, "Can you believe he's famous?" There's nothing to say about it. We're in the middle of it.

[re acting caustic towards audiences in past] I would still be frank and honest and funny, but I'd be more sensitive. I think having a kid and seeing how the world works from that angle, you're a little more thoughtful and introspective. You don't want to spend your whole life being bitchy to people. But it worked then, and I'm still able to pull it out if I need to.

You can be a celebrity and not get too noticed. Unless you're out with a publicity hog like Madonna.

[when Madonna was doing Marlene Dietrich's look] I could hear Dietrich screaming from the grave, "Kill that trash, and kill her now!"

[on Madonna] I gave her everything -- friendship, love. How did she pay me back? By stabbing me in the back. I'm telling you as sure as I'm standing here, Madonna will steal everything from you, even your closest friends if she can get her grubby little hands on them.

Did I tell you about my nightmare? I dreamt I was Madonna, shopping at Tiffany's, where I was trying to buy some class.

Madonna and I were in the back of a limo driving to some concert in L.A., and she said, "Sandy, did you fuck Warren Beatty?" I said, "No." And then a month later she started dating him. I always thought, What if I had said yes, I'd fucked him, would that have meant she wouldn't have wanted him? The deal would have been off? I guess she was just testing the waters.

I keep my friends my whole life, but Madonna feels differently.

I never slept with Madonna. We were pulling everybody's chains, creating a media frenzy.

[on her on- and off-screen relationship with Jerry Lewis, who played Mr. Langford, who himself said that women weren't being funny] No. Nothing Jerry Lewis says surprises me. I mean, he's old-school. He's from another generation where women were just there as foils. I don't think any of those kind of men really ever look at women and think, "Well, we need a woman here to make it really work." But no, nothing Jerry's ever said has impressed me, upset me, or affected me. I just accept him as I accept my father; they're just older men who came from a different way of thinking and a different generation.

[if Jerry Lewis loves to direct] Well, Jerry loves to direct. Whereas he is not as magnanimous as the rest of them, he would still acknowledge a powerful scene or a great moment by his reaction. He would register total fear and shock while sitting across the table from this lunatic Jewish girl. He had never seen anything like me.

[of Jerry Lewis] When they keep cutting to him and he looks like he's suffering, I don't think he was acting. Marty would let him direct a little bit in the movie, and in the scene - once I've cut Jerry Lewis out of his tape, where he hits me and knocks me out - he wanted me, in my bra and panties and high heels, to spin into a large glass table lit with a hundred candles. He kept showing me how I could do it, and I kept saying, 'I can't do it, Jerry,' 'You can do it! You can do it! I've done it a hundred times.' Finally, Marty interceded and he just puts me up against the wall and knocks me out, and I slide down and fall onto a pad. That was a crazy, classic Jerry Lewis moment.