“Like I said, I’ve got too much respect for women to marry them, but that doesn’t mean you can’t support them emotionally and financially.”

At the end of the day, ‘Rocky’ is a love story, and he could never have reached the final bell without Adrian.

I was an insecure kid. Once I saw ‘Hercules’ with Steve Reeves, it completely changed my life. If I had never gone to that film, I wouldn’t be here today.

There’s a natural law of karma that vindictive people, who go out of their way to hurt others, will end up broke and alone.

I believe there’s an inner power that makes winners or losers. And the winners are the ones who really listen to the truth of their hearts.

I consider myself something of a raconteur. I have a rather audacious sense of humour.

Nothing’s harder than writing. There’s no comparison. With directing, you can bounce a lot of ideas around. There’s tremendous support – you’ve got editors and sound mixers. With writing, it’s all you, and it’s just crippling when people tear up your pages.

When I was in junior high school, the teachers voted me the student most likely to end up in the electric chair.

Boxing is a great exercise as long as you can yell “cut” whenever you want to.

I think I’m a much better painter than an actor.

The problem is, your ego sometimes tells you that you can do many things. But sometimes it’s best to stay focused and be honest with yourself.

If you’re gonna be a failure, at least be one at something you enjoy.

When I tried to play characters that strayed from who I am it ended in disaster. People didn’t expect me in comedies or musicals.

I thought marriage was tough. Golf’s like going over Niagara Falls in a barrel! It’s a psychological game that gets into your blood.

I am a sensitive writer, actor and director. Talking business disgusts me. If you want to talk business, call my disgusting personal manager.

I tend to think of action movies as exuberant morality plays in which good triumphs over evil.

When you find the right components in your life, the right people, that gel with you, then you feel as though you’re invincible. It may be a fallacy, but you at least feel as though you can take all that life has to dish out.

If emotional pain or problems have cropped up in your life, you must insist on getting closure. Closure means you don’t carry the problem or the pain. You address the issue, then you slam shut the book and put it away.

It’s funny about men and women. Men pay in cash to get them and pay in cash to get rid of them. Women pay emotionally coming and going. Neither has it easy.

Jealousy is perhaps the most involuntary of all strong emotions. It steals consciousness, it lies deeper than thought. It is always there, like a blackness in the eye, it discolours the world.

She was a walking poem. A thunderstorm of emotions demanding to be felt.

I took a deep breath, however, and followed my rule of never speaking frankly to women in moments of emotion. No good ever comes of this.

God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth.

I’m a very emotional person, a person of real extremes, and that’s often destructive both to me and others.

Emotions are like waves. Watch them disappear in the distance on the vast calm ocean.