“I have thought about punching people out. Sometimes, I’ve thought, ‘Why don’t I just act on that impulse?’ But then, I’ve never hit anybody in anger. Hey! I’ve never hit anybody for fun.”

After a while I started to think of that as an image of something that went a lot deeper than the dead dog, which is you can’t bring back anything to life.

A really great actor, in a lucky performance, can transform himself or herself. I’ve seen actors do that.

I still don’t like the word agnostic. It’s too fancy. I’m simply not a believer. But, as simple as this notion is, it confuses some people.

I found I wasn’t asking good enough questions because I assumed I knew something.

I was always interested in figuring things out. I’d do experiments, like combining things I found around the house to see what would happen if I put them together.

Laugh at yourself, but don’t ever aim your doubt at yourself.

I found I wasn’t asking good enough questions because I assumed I knew something.

Almost everybody that’s well-known gets tagged with a nickname.

The difference between listening and pretending to listen, I discovered, is enormous. One is fluid, the other is rigid. One is alive, the other is stuffed.

Why do ordinary people become the target of this curiosity simply by virtue of the fact that other people recognize their names and faces but know nothing else about them? Why do we care what they think, what they wear, what they eat?

I don’t talk about my beliefs too much in public probably because I feel very strongly that it’s something personal – more than personal, it’s private.

The one hour live debate in the West Wing that we did was one of the most exciting times for me on stage or on camera, because anything could go wrong.

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed is really advice to myself, a reminder to myself not to avoid change or uncertainty, but to go with it, to surf into change.

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.

I’ve been nominated twice before as actor in a leading part. Now I’m nominated as actor in a supporting part.

I’ve been lucky enough to live through all the things that are supposed to give meaning to our lives, like parenting, grandparenting, art, celebrity.

Nobody’s talking to me, but nobody’s hassling me either. I guess you can’t have everything.

Nobody knows [who they are] because when [terrorists] are dead and they are killed, they don’t have any ID.

It made me love talk that sought answers to questions that could help nobody, that could only keep alive in me that enthralling sense of wonder and awe in the face of the drama of human feeling which is hidden by the external drama of life.

Nobody knows what you feel inside unless you tell them.

It wasn’t until I was 37 that I grasped the great truth that you’ve got to write your own books and nobody else’s, and then everything followed from there.

Nobuddy ever listened t’ reason on a empty stomach.

Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who has a low opinion of himself.

Nobody knows I’m Elvis, nobody knows this is me. After all of my tries, I’ve got the perfect disguise.