“I’m naturally shy but I’ve done this [movie Salomaybe] so much and you get better at it than you would think.”

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.

It’s very evocative; it’s like a first cut because you hear ‘She walked to the door,’ and you visualize all these things. ‘She opens the door’ . . . because you read the stage directions, too.

It surprised me, the feeling I got when I won the Oscar for ‘Scent of a Woman.’ It was a new feeling. I’d never felt it.

I don’t understand the hatred and fear of gays and bisexuals and lesbians… it’s a concept I honestly cannot grasp.

We’re charlatans in a way, we’re magic people. Part of the behind the scenes stuff is to loosen you up, to make you feel that you are experiencing this. This is my style.

That was the first thing I was struck by, not by the acting, not by anything else, but by the physicality.

There are people whose sense of reality is very strong, who have a sense of honesty.

Sometimes you’re fighting corporations and forget that people can talk to each other.

Love is overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate

I personally think if you’re given four months instead of four weeks on a play, with the people who want to work that way.

All due respect, and trying to be as modest as I can be: I am a dancer.

All I am is what I’m going after.

You never open your mouth until you know what the shot is.

In America most everybody who’s Italian is half Italian. Except me. I’m all Italian. I’m mostly Sicilian, and I have a little bit of Neapolitan in me. You get your full dose with me.

If you have the opportunity to meet someone as an actor, it’s just great fodder for you. It’s wonderful source stuff that we die for.

When you do these things, you sort of take the journey. The journey is all about how I can interweave the Oscar Wilde story.

As long as I play ball, I can get any woman I want.

Looking at faces of people, one gets the feeling there’s a lot of work to be done.

You’ll get back to where you came from.

The number one reason most people don’t get what they want is that they don’t know what they want. Rich people are totally clear that they want wealth. They are unwavering in their desire. They are fully committed to creating wealth.

The important thing is this Just because I’m doing well doesn’t mean that they’re going to do well if they get HIV. A lot of people have died since I have announced. This disease is not going anywhere.

It’s amazing that Bill Clinton could do one thing and have sex with his secretary and really get away with it and still be powerful.

Larry Bird is overrated in a lot of areas. … Why does he get so much publicity? Because he’s white. You never hear about a black player being the greatest.

Once Michael gets up there he says, ‘Well, maybe I’ll just hang up here in the air for a while, just sit back.’ Then all of a sudden, he says, ‘Well, maybe I’ll 360.