Walt Disney Quotes

I just love to impersonate people, and I impersonate people because I find them fascinating.

I was just the perfect person to play the Mini-Me character.

In 2004 I had the fortune - or the misfortune - of playing John Kerry. It was hard because I think the best impressions exaggerate someone's most well-known quality. And exaggerating gravitas is very hard to pull off.

I was never really an impressionist. If there was somebody within my range, maybe I could work on it and do a little exaggeration of them - which I think is really the way to do an impression.

[On "John F. Kennedy" set] everybody was very interested in the accent. Even my collaborators were very curious to know if I was even going to do it. And I was, like, "You just can't not do it." I think everybody was worried that it was going to sound like the guy from... is it The Simpsons?

I have often been told that I have many of the same mannerisms as Jack Benny and certainly Bob Cummings.

The best portraits are those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature.

I would love to do something like Austin Powers to show off my comic timing.

So cartooning, for me, is an honorable thing. It's pushing the envelope. It's the truth of something through exaggeration.

I talk as I sketch, too, in order to keep their minds off what I'm doing so I'll get the most natural expression I can from them. Also, the talking helps to size up the subject's personality, so I can figure out better how to portray him.

One of my favorite films is 'Dumb and Dumber.' I'd love to do some really silly comedy someday.

'Naked Gun 33 1/3' I think made me laugh more than anything ever made.

Chris Farley, I was a huge fan of his growing up. I would love to do something kind of slapstick and funny, maybe where I could change my look even a little bit.

I think audiences can relate to the guys I'm playing, those large-and-in-charge idiots. Or maybe I just make them feel better about who they are, or who they're dating.

I'm not an impersonator. I'm a lousy impersonator, actually.

As a cartoonist, I'm a caricaturist. First you find out what somebody really looks like, and then you find out what they 'really' look like.

I think impersonation is a great art. It's something that I enjoy doing, in a frivolous and lighthearted way. But I don't flatter myself to think I'm an impersonator.

Sometimes, comics will make the observation that it's not jokes that are funny, it's characters that are funny. And isn't that true! That's why I always kill jokes. I'm terrible at them, because I get the joke right, but I can't get the character right, and it just goes down like a lead balloon.

I think one of the funniest things about '30 Rock' is that Liz Lemon is sort of like Buster Keaton - she's always the fool, the joke is always on her.

One of the first comic things you do is imitate.

The Marx Brothers isn't subtle, and that's hilarious.

When I was a kid, I loved all the silent comedians - Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, Chaplin. And I used to imitate them. I'd go to see a Buster Keaton movie and come home and try things out I'd seen. I learned to do pratfalls when I was very young.

I don't use names or captions for my many portraits of politicians and authors for newspapers. The drawing has to be self-explanatory, so I spend a lot of time sketching to find an idea and an angle that is clear.

The thing that got me closest to doing Kermit was remembering what Jim did when he was doing Kermit. When he would do Kermit, there were certain faces that he made. There was a certain way he stood, a certain kind of body language that he had.

I'm usually cast by people who are oddly goofy.