That's still the greatest high, that feeling of being in control of 2,000 people. It's me and them, and I like the odds. It's not even so much the funny. It's getting them quiet. In the quiet moments in '700 Sundays,' I just really love that they're getting moved.

Billy Crystal

Women need a reason to have sex. Men just need a place.

It is great seeing the fruits of your labor. The joy I have in watching my daughters with their kids is great, because they're doing a wonderful job, and the kids are fantastic.

Billy Crystal

Great Your You

What life throws at you - you just have to learn how to hit it, which is a baseball metaphor. The ball's outside, you hit to the right. You don't let them go by.

Billy Crystal

Life You Which

Muhammad Ali struck us in the middle of America's darkest night, in the heart of its most threatening gathering storm. His power toppled the mightiest of foes, and his intense light shined on America, and we were able to see clearly injustice, inequality, poverty, pride, self realization, courage, laughter, love, joy and religious freedom for all.

Billy Crystal

Power Love Freedom

What's so fascinating and frustrating and great about life is that you're constantly starting over, all the time, and I love that.

Billy Crystal

Time Love Life

I think it's like a relay race. You run, and you hand over the baton, and your kids pick it up. They take the stuff they want, throw the rest away, and keep running. That's what life is about.

Billy Crystal

Life Your You

I never missed a birthday. I never missed a school play. We carpooled. And the greatest compliment I can ever get is not about my career or performance or anything; it's when people say, 'You know, your girls are great.' That's the real thing for me.

Billy Crystal

Men Great Car

Only once in a thousand years or so do we get to hear a Mozart or see a Picasso or read a Shakespeare. Ali was one of them, and yet at his heart, he was still a kid from Louisville who ran with the gods and walked with the crippled and smiled at the foolishness of it all.

Billy Crystal

Smile God Art

I still don't love the darkness, though I've learned to smile in it a little bit, now and then.

Billy Crystal

Smile Love Till

My mind is always going. I'm always thinking what I need to do, what I haven't done, what I did do, what I didn't do as well as I could - I'm relentless that way with myself.

Billy Crystal

Wit Well Ways

Change is such hard work.

Billy Crystal

Work Change Hard Work

Nothing takes the sting out of these tough economic times like watching a bunch of millionaires giving golden statues to each other.

Billy Crystal

Time Watching Watch

My grandparents invented joylessness. They were not fun. I've already had more fun with my grandchildren than my grandparents ever had with me.

Billy Crystal

Wit Were Vent

I was a good baseball player. I still play a couple of times a week as part of my daily workout. Just throwing the ball, running around, fielding ground balls, you know. It's better to me than being on a treadmill or some sort of Zumba class.

Billy Crystal

Work Time Good

Kids need a happy household. They need to be loved and supported in their dreams. And I don't think you can make your kids' dreams your own. They need you to support them in their dreams.

Billy Crystal

Love Dreams Your

Believe me, happiness is not ticking off Walter Cronkite.

Billy Crystal

Happiness Walt Ticking

Ali forced us to take a look at ourselves. This brash young man who thrilled us, angered us, confused and challenged us, ultimately became a silent messenger of peace who taught us that life is best when you build bridges between people, not walls.

Billy Crystal

Peace Life Anger

I love Mickey Mantle. Would I have felt the same if I had known when I was eight years old what I know now?

Billy Crystal

Love Years Year

One night, I wrote down all the things I was waiting to do with my little granddaughter, and it became a book, 'I Already Know I Love You.' It was one of those really lovely things in life.

Billy Crystal

Love Life You

When I was growing up in the house, we'd watch the Oscars.

Billy Crystal

Car Wing Win

Of course my uncle was a giant, but my dad, in particular, had the house filled with these great Dixieland jazz stars, really the best of them: Henry Red Allen, Willie 'The Lion' Smith, Buster Bailey, Cutty Cutshall, Tyree Glenn, Zutty Singleton. These are all big names in the Dixieland world.

Billy Crystal

When you're the host of the Academy Awards, and you grew up watching Bob Hope and Johnny Carson, and now it's your turn, and you get a chance to run with the baton on the relay for a while, I really embraced it and just really loved being there.

Billy Crystal

The truth is, in this age of Instagram and Facebook and Snapchat, we know way too much about athletes - and it's their fault.

Billy Crystal

Humans love sex, we need sex, it's how we connect, it reminds us we're alive, it's the third most basic human need, after food and good movie popcorn.

Billy Crystal

Dad had a music store, and he'd often bring home comedy albums that I would listen to. I started listening to Bob Newhart and Bill Cosby, and developing taste. They really influenced my style of comedy.

Billy Crystal

My dad died when I was 15 and worked way too much.

Billy Crystal

People are always telling you you're done. Someone's always telling you that, especially now in the day of social media.

Billy Crystal

I'm a baby. I sleep like a baby - I'm up every two hours. And I think a lot. I worry a lot. I have great nights of no sleep where ideas come.

Billy Crystal

My girls turned out great.

Billy Crystal

My older brother Joel became an art teacher; my brother Rip ultimately became a television producer and singer and actor himself.

Billy Crystal

My Aunt Sheila was terrifying! She would put a napkin in her mouth and say, 'You've got something on your face, dear. Let me just scratch that off your face. Let me sand your cheek.'

Billy Crystal

I was a per diem floater in the same junior high school I went to. I sat in the office and made $42.50 a day, and whenever a teacher was absent, I'd substitute. I taught everything from English to auto shop.

Billy Crystal

I'm comfortable being old... being black... being Jewish.

Billy Crystal

We're in this together. We are Americans. We all have to do the best we can. And we will because that's who we are.

Billy Crystal

I was a film-directing major at NYU. I'm still not sure why I became a directing major, when I was really an actor and a comedian, but there was something that drew me to doing that.

Billy Crystal

I've known Kareem since I was kid. He lived in Manhattan, but my best friend used to go to high school with him, and he was in my house the day I graduated from high school in 1965.

Billy Crystal

I have performed my one-man show '700 Sundays' over 400 times now. There were only two times that I can honestly say I was nervous. The first was when I knew Mel Brooks was in the audience, and the second was when Sid Caesar came.

Billy Crystal

That whole concept of 'I want to really go after people' - I don't understand that. Is it a roast, or is it an awards show?

Billy Crystal

I'm almost shocked that I'm still around after all of these years... and always grateful that I get another turn to do something.

Billy Crystal

Time scares me: having enough time to do all the things that I want to do in life, just even in terms of forgetting about the business I'm in.

Billy Crystal

In the late 1960s, I was working as an usher for the New York stage production of 'You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown.'

Billy Crystal

A laugh is a weird sound, and when you get a couple thousand people making it at once, it's really strange. But when I can feel proud of myself for causing it, it's great.

Billy Crystal

Doing my Broadway show '700 Sundays' reminded me how much I love working in front of an audience.

Billy Crystal

Even when I was in school shows, in elementary school doing plays, I'd always go off book and start improvising.

Billy Crystal

That's still the greatest high, that feeling of being in control of 2,000 people. It's me and them, and I like the odds. It's not even so much the funny. It's getting them quiet. In the quiet moments in '700 Sundays,' I just really love that they're getting moved.

Billy Crystal

The Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower. They're monumental. They're straight out of Page 52 in your school history book.

Billy Crystal

To be good, you need to believe in what you're doing.

Billy Crystal

I never worry that I'll die in my sleep, because I'm never asleep!

Billy Crystal

Your first friends are your truest friends, I find. And the ones that stick are really special.

Billy Crystal

When I first started, there were, like... two or three critics that you thought, 'Alright, I hope I get a good review from them.' And now there's millions of them.

Billy Crystal