“It would be nice to feel that we are a better world, a world of more compassion and a world of more humanity, and to believe in the basic goodness of man.”

Being a parent is tough. If you just want a wonderful little creature to love, you can get a puppy

Work harder than everybody. You’re not going to get it by whining, and you’re not going to get it by shouting, and you’re not going to get it by quitting. You’re going to get it by being there.

Although I myself don’t go to church or synagogue, I do, whether it’s superstition or whatever, pray every time I get on a plane. I just automatically do it. I say the same thing every time.

A good laugh makes any interview, or any conversation, so much better.

politics … is the hottest, most dangerous subject in the land. It’s not only a conversation-wrecker, it’s a friendship-wrecker, a family-wrecker, a job-wrecker, a future-wrecker.

Don’t confuse being stimulating with being blunt.

The feeling is that Fidel Castro’s much bigger than he actually is.

If it’s a woman it’s caustic, if it’s a man it’s authority, If it’s a woman it’s too pushy, if it’s a man it’s aggressive in the best sense of the word.

The news media in general are liberal. If you want to be a reporter, you are going to see poverty and misery, and you have to be involved in the human condition.

No one could ad lib like Peter. You would think that it was all scripted, he was so poetic, but it wasn’t.

And I really do believe that the most important thing is the way you live your life on earth. But I think it’s enormously comforting to believe that you’re going to see your loved ones.

[On being indecisive and changeable:] On my gravestone I want inscribed: ‘On the other hand, maybe I should have lived.

Homogeneity is much to be admired – in milk, for instance – but not for parties.

Life sometimes brings enormous difficulties and challenges that seem just too hard to bear. But bear them you can, and bear them you will, and your life can have a purpose.

To feel valued, to know, even if only once in a while, that you can do a job well is an absolutely marvelous feeling.

I can get a better grasp of what is going on in the world from one good Washington dinner party than from all the background information NBC piles on my desk.

So, it’s nice but I wouldn’t want to go into something feeing like I needed to prove that I was good enough to be there.

I really hope that I can be as good as some people think I can be. But I may never work again… and that’s the reality of the film industry.

If you think that people should be nice to one another, then by all means be nice. But when you project that belief onto the people and the world around you as if it were an objective reality, or worse still.

I think just being together and talking would be nice. But when we grow old, when greed and vanity will be completely gone, when I will be tired of singing can I return to that place too?

Right now I am full of greed and vanity, so I cannot live with you like before. But may be we can meet like this.

It’s nice when people approach you to help.

I like the level of fame that I have. You get nice tables in restaurants sometimes, but fame isn’t something that I find comfortable.

Flying can be such a claustrophobic experience, it’s nice to open that up a bit with music.