“To know that the odds are so high that only through the perishing of your life will the minions survive, that’s love. That’s heroism.”

I really am a manifestation of my own fantasy.

I’m a patriot of the heart.

Every time I’ve failed, people had me out for the count, but I always come back.

Movies are a whole different ball-game, now. It’s much more of a business – very scientific.

Voices are like fingerprints, from Cagney to Bogart. They never lost it. My voice is instrumental in categorizing me.

Don’t discuss your dreams. Pursue them!

I have a fear of heights that borders on mania.

Theater is like boxing – having the audience ringside. It’s instant gratification. Or horrification.

Characters I’ve played, they used to impact my paintings, like 80 percent of the time, and especially when I was doing an action film.

The older I get the more things I gotta leave behind.

Clothing is the first step to building a character.

I wanted to show I had balls at age 60. Just because society says I’m old, doesn’t mean that I am. I’m pursuing happiness, even if it makes the people around me unhappy.

Artists die twice. First creatively. Then physically. The second one is the easiest.

I have tons of regrets, but I think that’s one of the reasons that push people to create things. Out of their angst, their regret, comes the best from artists, painters and writers.

Suddenly I’ve got an overwhelming desire to surround myself with the aura of classical and Romantic art.

I think everyone has a certain kind of formula in their life. When you deviate from that formula, you’re going to fail big or you’re gonna win big.

There is a kind of expressed love which is easy to subvert. When a figure is loved for their deeds, their conquests, their heroism, their goodness, their love of the people, these are easy enough to destroy… But there is a kind of love which is felt for apparently no reason…

This is what makes heroism so important: it reflects our own sense of identity and from this our own heroism is molded.

[As] Santayana wrote, ‘Nothing requires a rarer intellectual heroism than willingness to see one’s equation written out.’

Heroism does not require spiritual maturity.

If an historian be an unbeliever in all heroism, if he be a man who brings every thing down to the level of a common mediocrity, depend upon it, the truth is not found in such a writer.

I am bleak heroism of words that refuse to be buried alive with the liars.

Truth is a tyrant-the only tyrant to whom we can give our allegiance. The service of truth is a matter of heroism.