114 Quotes by Mike Nichols

It's the hardest thing on earth to like yourself, and then when you do, it's a catastrophe. I mean, the people I know who like themselves - I don't want to see them!

Yes. The whole point about laughter is it’s like mercury: you can’t catch it, you can’t catch what motivates it—that’s why it’s funny,

Will we allow the decline of our language-the language of Shakespeare, Shaw and Steinbeck? Will we abuse our precious gift of communication? Will we bite our mother tongue with the teeth of indifference, crushing the taste buds of clarity and, without prompt application of the antiseptic of education, causing the gangrene of strained metaphors? Stand up, America, and let me hear your answer: Ain't no way, dude!

No doubt you are as alarmed as I by the tragic decline in America's language skills. If 10 people read the following sentence: Two tanker trucks has just overturned in Alaska, spilling a totel of 10,000 gallons of beer onto a highway. two would find an error in subject-verb agreement, two would find an error in spelling, and six would find a sponge and drive north.

In making movies, time is so short-because it is so expensive-that we tend to neglect the place from which the best ideas come, namely that part of ourselves that dreams. The unconscious is our best collaborator.

Jewish introspection and Jewish humor is a way of surviving . . . if you're not handsome and you're not athletic and you're not rich, there's still one last hope with girls, which is being funny.

I have never understood people dividing things into dramas and comedies,

That seems to me the greatest American danger we're all in, that we'll bargain away the experience of being alive for the appearance of it.

The only safe thing is to take a chance. Play safe and you are dead. Taking risks is the essence of good work, and the difference between safe and bold can only be defined by yourself since no one else knows for what you are hoping when you embark on anything.