“Shakespeare is one of the reasons I’ve stayed an actor. Sometimes I spend full days doing Shakespeare by myself, just for the joy of reading it, saying those words.”

You’ll never be alone if you’ve got a book.

One of the things that made me want to be an actor more than ever was seeing a Chekhov play, “The Sea Gull,” when was 14 in the Bronx.

We live in a world where the more you’re working, the more things you do. It’s a workaday world.

Drinking and smoking grass were a part of my life as far back as I can remember.

Actually, the person I related to was James Dean. I grew up with the Dean thing. Rebel Without A Cause had a very powerful effect on me.

There is only one way of surviving all the early heartbreaks in this business. You must have a sense of humor. And I think it also helps if you are a dreamer. I had my dreams all right. And that is something no one can ever take away.

Early on in my career, I remember running – fleeing – to the theater as a way of coping with all the meshugaas that was going on for me.

Women have always had equal importance onstage, and working with them must have altered my sensibilities.

Their minds, the way in which they se the world is so striking, the way they juxtapose things, the way they can see humor in people. There’s a liberation in that.

When my mother got home from work, she would take me to the movies.

My children can make me feel rejected. They can humble you pretty quick.

I’ve never cared for guns. In fact, when I did ‘Scent of a Woman’ I had to learn how to assemble one.

I don’t feel like a person who takes risks. Yet there’s something within me that must provoke controversy because I find it wherever I go.

Sometimes what we imagine and the world aren’t different things.

I like, for instance, ‘Serpico.’ I enjoyed playing Serpico because Frank Serpico was there. He existed. He was a real life person and I could – I could embody him. I could, you know.

People are always asking me to do Shakespeare – at home, at colleges, on film locations, in restaurants. It’s like playing a piece of music, getting all the notes. It’s great therapy.

I’m not a military general, a business guru, not a philosopher or author. It’s only me.

Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.

I have no illusions concerning the precarious status of my tales and do not expect to become a serious competitor of my favorite weird authors.

Theology made no provision for evolution. The biblical authors had missed the most important revelation of all! Could it be that they were not really privy to the thoughts of God?

The really great novel tends to be the exact negative of its author’s life.

I have for a long time loved fabulist, imaginative fiction, such as the writing of Italo Calvino, Jose Saramago, Michael Bulgakov, and Salman Rushdie.

Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you’re a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.

I am spellbound by the plays of Shakespeare. And I am spellbound by the second law of thermodynamics.