Quotes

When a community theater group was caught performing one of Kaufman's plays without permission or payment of royalties, Kaufman threatened to send them to jail for theft. The theater director thought they didn't need to pay royalties because, as he put it, "It's just a small, insignificant, little theater in a small, insignificant, little town." Kaufman's reply: "Then we'll send you all to a small, insignificant, little jail."

I like terra firma -- the more firma, the less terra.

(Upon seeing so many billboard ads with an alluring Jane Russell in The Outlaw (1943)) They ought to call it "A Sale of Two Titties".

[on writing for the Marx Brothers who were given to ad-libbing their dialogue] I may be wrong. But I think I just heard one of the original lines.

[advice to a writer who had a spelling problem] I'm not very good at it myself, but the first rule about spelling is that there is only one 'z' in 'is'.

Satire is what closes Saturday night.

[to George Gershwin] If you play that score one more time before we open, people will think you're doing a revival.

I'd bet on George [Gershwin] any time in a hundred yard dash to the piano.