“Everybody’s life has some mythical quality. You struggle against obstacles, you fight to get to a higher level and there are great loves.”

My problem is that people get intimidated by someone big and beautiful like me. They hate to think I can be smart as well.

Your body’s made to run, to walk, to trek long distances and carry things, work in a forest, and hunt animals. You have to keep it alive to function.

I used to play drums when I was a kid, play the trombone.

I discovered martial arts, first judo and then karate.

If I need to bulk up for a role, I will do more weights. If I need to slim down for something, I will do more cardio. That’s usually how it goes.

I think by planning an exercise regime, your diet follows to some extent.

My sensei was a British karate champion named Brian Fitkin. He was my mentor and because I had a hard relationship with my dad, he became a father figure to me.

Nicolas Cage is a great actor and he’s done some good action movies too.

At least once a week, I try to have one day where I have nothing planned so I can get up and just go back to bed and lay around and recharge my batteries.

When I started studying acting in New York, I didn’t plan to be an action hero. I just wanted to learn acting because I felt it was something I needed to try to do for myself, to express something, my inner pain, or something I couldn’t get out.

When I got cast in ‘Rocky IV,’ I had never seen a film camera before. And here I was in this boxing movie.

I’ve drank more beer and pissed more blood and banged more women than all you numb nuts put together!

I train about four or five times a week. I guess I am addicted to it. I also do a lot of martial arts. More than I have done in awhile. I like to go back to martial arts because it makes me feel good.

The acting style that has emerged from HD, because of the contrast and how sharp the picture is, it’s more neutrally played. The main character is very minamalistic. That’s what works in this digital age.

I like being the villian. I don’t know if it has to do with my personality. You get to have a lot more fun as a villian. You don’t have to stick to the rules. You can be a lot crazier. You can go off the rails.

I’ve never had a good line. Well, maybe ‘I must break you’.

Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning.

Books were safer than other people anyway.

Do you know, one of the greatest problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas?

Dogmatism is the greatest of mental obstacles to human happiness.

Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of great fear.

A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.

Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.

Greatness is not built in a rush, but with care, patience and love.