“I was kind of a wild child. I wasn’t taught the niceties of life.”

I find George Bush and Dick Cheney frightening, Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft frightening.

If a man wants to get it right, he’s looked up to and respected. If a woman wants to get it right, she’s difficult or impossible. If he acts, produces and directs, he’s called multitalented. If she does the same thing, she’s called vain and egotistical.

Art finds a way to be constructive. It becomes heat in cold places; it becomes light in dark places.

It’s true that I have a very healthy ego; anybody who creates does.

On a very basic level, many people think celebrities have too much already, so we shouldn’t be entitled to our political opinions.

To have ego means to believe in your own strength. And to also be open to other people’s views. It is to be open, not closed. So, yes, my ego is big, but it’s also very small in some areas. My ego is responsible for my doing what I do – bad or good.

I always wear the same thing at home. I can’t be bothered with jewelry. My pants have elastic waists. I like to be comfortable. There are so many more important things to worry about.

Art is the signature of a generation; artists have a way of defining the times.

I don’t read music. Not even essentially. Not even nonessentially.

Directing is so interesting. You know, it just sort of encompasses everything that you see, that you know, that you’ve felt, that you have observed.

I don’t like talking about myself and I don’t like talking about the work.

I remember when I was 5 living on Pulaski Street in Brooklyn, the hallway of our building had a brass banister and a great sound, a great echo system. I used to sing in the hallway.

My nose was part of my heritage, and if I had talent to sing and to act, why wasn’t that enough?

I don’t know why it is that we need to denigrate, to knock down. It’s so sick.

When I was maybe 5 or 6 years old, the neighborhood girls would sit on the stoop and sing. I was known as the kid who had a good voice and no father.

I’ve been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good.

No man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.

I had a great time doing drugs. Sorry. Never murdered anyone, never robbed anyone, never raped anyone, never beat anyone, never lost a job, a car, a house, a wife or kids, laughed my ass off, and went about my day.

I never studied art, but taught myself to draw by imitating the New Yorker cartoonists of that day, instead of doing my homework.

I was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and no one had ever taught anybody that young, back in those days.

Science has taught us how to put the atom to work. But to make it work for good instead of for evil lies in the domain dealing with the principles of human dignity. We are now facing a problem more of ethics than of physics.

Women don’t run around saying, “Oh, I took a Bodysex workshop, and I had so much fun, and Betty Dodson taught us how to blah blah.” They come, they go, and I rarely hear from them again.

What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.

I don’t read music; I taught myself guitar.