“I’ve seen high and lows. When things go well that doesn’t make me feel like some genius. Nor will I allow the next disappointment to make me feel like a complete failure.”

You don’t know what the pattern of flour and chicken is going to be, but you know you’re going to get some good fried chicken.

I find forgiveness to be really healthy.

A friend of my mom’s was a casting director so, really as kind of a lark, I had a couple of acting jobs that had just enough exposure to give me the option to continue if I wanted to. I followed through with it.

You have to be kind to people. Treat them decently. There’s no excuse for not.

It’s important for me to try my hand at philanthropy because I want to leave behind a record of someone who did more than just gobble up stuff for themselves. I realized that a life lived for yourself is not much of a life.

All I do, really, is go to work and try to be professional, be on time and be prepared.

Memories, all those little experiences make up the fabric of our lives and on balance, I wouldn’t want to erase any of them, tempting though it may be.

I kinda see my current position like this: Here’s your five minutes in the toy store, so you gotta do all the good movies you can before ‘Chuck Woolery’ rings the bell.

Every single director-actor I talked to, from Warren Beatty to Clint Eastwood to George Clooney, said the biggest mistake they made is not shooting enough footage of themselves.

I feel like fame is wasted on me.

I remember back when I was a kid there was a comic strip called Plastic Man. His body was elastic and he could make his extremities as long as he wanted. As a youngster I didn’t fully appreciate. But I’m now thinking Plastic Man was probably pretty popular with the ladies.

I’m always described as ‘cocksure’ or ‘with a swagger,’ and that bears no resemblance to who I feel like inside. I feel plagued by insecurity.

There’s a lot of noise in the world, and the internet magnifies that energy.

I’m human, just like anybody else.

Just because a lot of people know something nominal doesn’t make it important. A lot of people know what a pencil sharpener is, but that doesn’t make it the most important invention of the 20th century.

There is currency to celebrity, or celebrity is a currency. You can spend it in a lot of ways, or you can squander it. You can be taxed, as well. I really started thinking long and hard about how to use that currency as long as I had it.

I want the audience to watch my films, and that is what I value more than any awards.

The characters I portray are an extension of what I’ve seen, heard, or read, and so what you see in my films are how I understand life.

Religious superstitions more than all other influences put together cripple & enslave woman, but so long as women themselves do not see it & hug their chains, we have a great educational work to do.

When you’re dead, you don’t breathe, you don’t see, you don’t feel, you don’t love.

There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been!

Anybody who gives you a belief system is your enemy, because the belief system becomes the barrier for your eyes, you cannot see the truth.

Seeing off the new ball is important for me. I know that once I do that, the only way I could get out could be from my own mistake.

Remember that just the moment you say, “I give up,” someone else seeing the same situation is saying, “My, what a great opportunity.”