“For a while in my teens, I was sure I had it. It was about getting to heaven. If heaven existed and lasted forever, then a mere lifetime spent scrupulously following orders was a small investment for an infinite payoff.”

Kids are natural scientists.

As I am becoming older, the only thing that speeds up is time.

I guess in a world uncomfortable with uncertainty, an unbeliever must be an atheist, and possibly an infidel.

It’s really clear to me that you can’t hang onto something longer than its time. Ideas lose certain freshness, ideas have a shelf life, and sometimes they have to be replaced by other ideas.

[You have to be] willing to be changed by the person you’re listening to, where you’re not just waiting for a pause so you can say your thing, but you’re actually letting them have an effect on you if they can.

I have a final word of advice to our students. If you work very, very hard, this is the kind of actor, writer and director you may turn out to be, and if you work extra hard, this is the kind of person you may turn out to be.

I play tennis non-obsessively. I seem to beat people I play a lot or half the time, so I guess I gravitate to people who are as bad as I am.

I’m in this wonderful position where I can do what interests me. And whatever comes along that interests me, I do. The rest of the time I bother scientists about communicating.

Whenever you wonder about yourself, look up at the stars swirling around in the heavens and just realize how tiny and puny they are.

Be as smart as you can, but remember that it is always better to be wise than to be smart.

It’s too bad I’m not as wonderful a person as people say I am, because the world could use a few people like that.

It’s nice to have more time to work on the character, and to have big scenes to play. But if there’s something playable there, and if it’s interesting to do, then that’s nice.

I’m most at home on the stage. I was carried onstage for the first time when I was six months old.

It’s not an epitaph. I felt I could look back at my life and get a good story out of it. It’s a picture of somebody trying to figure things out.

Selling out was frowned on, whereas now you can major in it at business school.

They wont all lie to you but a lot of them will. And itll be the easiest lie they ever had to tell to get your votes.

You get older and you suddenly realize the only person you’re in competition with is yourself.

I am appalled by this Marilyn Monroe cult. Perhaps it’s getting to be an act of courage to say the truth about her. Well, let me be courageous.

I just hope I don’t have to explain all the times I’ve used His name in vain when I get up there.

I think as any artist you always want to grow; you always want to get better.

Cleansed of its leftist residues, anarchy – anarchism minus Marxism – will be free to get better at being what it is.

We usually meet all of our relatives only at funerals where somebody always observes: “Too bad we can’t get together more often”.

When a man is no longer anxious to do better than well, he is done for.

It’s about being proud of who you are, being proud of your situation and just being stoked that things are always going to get better or always gonna get worse and that’s such a great thing. Every day is a new surprise.