“I believe in one day at a time; you’ve got TODAY, that’s what you’ ve got.”

I’ve always been a bit squeamish when it came to that kind of thing.

The actor becomes an emotional athlete. The process is painful – my personal life suffers.

“What was that, George, what were you doing?” And he said, “They were sleeping.” You’re always trying to catch them.

I destroy the painting as soon as I can see what it is. When I can make out something in it,

I think what you see [in Salome the play backstage] is an artist having this fit of temperament.

After looking at Salomaybe, I don’t know who the hell the real me is. I think it’s closest now to the real me because for one thing, I’m used to this.

When I was younger, there was the sex thing. That’s par for the course.When you’re a movie star, it went with it. It’s a kind of rite of passage, socially.

[Ocean’s Thirteen] is a great group, and it was an opportunity to work with Steven Soderbergh. But mainly? It was shot in L.A. and I want to be next to my kids.

I come from the South Bronx – a true descendant of the melting pot. I grew up in a really mixed neighborhood; it was a very integrated life.

It’s childish. It’s also responsible. It’s illuminating, enriching, joyful, drab. It’s bizarre, diabolical. It’s exciting.

My first language was shy. It’s only by having been thrust into the limelight that I have learned to cope with my shyness.

I was quite overtaken by success and fame. I was one of those types who responded to it in a negative way. It was not easy.

When I was younger, I would go to auditions to have the opportunity to audition, which would mean another chance to get up there and try out my stuff.

Be careful how you judge people, most of all friends. You don’t sum up a man’s life in one moment.

Our life is looking forward or looking back, that’s it. Where is the moment?

And then you go back like a few days later and then you listen to the movie. And it sort of plays in your mind like a film, like a first rough cut of a movie.

In the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation.

You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.

Barbarism is not the inheritance of our pre-history. It is the companion that dogs our every step.

In love, fidelity signifies this extended victory: the randomness of an encounter defeated day after day through the invention of what will endure.

I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day to day take on things. The bare facts of life are utterly terrifying. And yet, one can laugh. Indeed, one has to laugh precisely because of the darkness: the nervous laughter of the trenches.

I’m always on a red carpet . . . the other day I thought, this ain’t bad. You can meet people on it.

When I was a younger actor, I would try to keep it serious all day. But I have found, later on, that the lighter I am about things when I’m going to do a big scene that’s dramatic and takes a lot out of you, the better off I am when I come to it.

Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.