“I have never seen people who could do real work except under the stimulus of encouragement and enthusiasm and the approval of the people for whom they are working.”

Some people are so methodical that that is all they are or ever will be.

An idea, like a machine, must have power applied to it before it can accomplish anything.

Without self-respect there can be no genuine success. Success won at the cost of self-respect is not success ? for what shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own self-respect.

The man who is cocksure that he has arrived is ready for the return journey.

I have known not a few men who, after reaching the summits of business success, found themselves miserable on attaining retirement age. They were so exclusively engrossed in their day to day affairs that they had no time for friend making.

The Bible says, ‘Where there is no vision, the people perish.’ Have you a vision? And are you undeviatingly pressing and pushing toward its accomplishment? Dreaming alone will not get you there. Mix your dreams with determination and action.

He who has faith has… an inward reservoir of courage, hope, confidence, calmness, and assuring trust that all will come out well – even though to the world it may appear to come out most badly.

Plan your work – work your plan

Kill time and you will kill your career.

The truth doesn’t hurt unless it ought to.

In the race for success, speed is less important than stamina.

Think not of yourself as the architect of your career but as the sculptor. Expect to have to do a lot of hard hammering and chiselingand scraping and polishing.

Bragging often precedes begging.

It’s so much easier to do good than to be good.

The man who is too busy to read is never likely to lead.

Backboneless employees are too ready to attribute the success of others to luck. Luck is usually the fruit of intelligent application. The man who is intent on making the most of his opportunities is too busy to bother about luck.

Few real people appear in my two novels, actually. “Ari” appears on the edge of this book a couple of times – but on the edge, she’s never in it, even if she’s a determining force from the outside. Everybody in the first book was basically made up, if never from scratch.

The Photo Album is the weakest record. For the first time in our careers, we found ourselves with an economic incentive to be on the road and to be making albums.

And I’ve always said, ‘If two people think the same thing about everything, one of them isn’t necessary.’ We need to be able to understand that if we’re going to make real progress.

I’ve made a career over the last seventeen years of mostly playing men in uniform, especially cops. The one thing for an actor that is completely death is if you’re bored, because that boredom will show in your work.

It’s fun to pretend you’re good at something you know you wouldn’t be good at in real life.

Drag artists are more men than real men. You need a lot of courage, personality, and guts to go out there.

I suddenly realized that comedy, for me, was just being honest, and playing it for real. I’ve seen so many wonderful actors who turn into creatures from another planet when they’re told they are supposed to be playing comedy.

There are other people who don’t mind shouting from the pulpit and being judged for it, and they do a hell of a lot of good – real, on-the-ground, life-changing good. So I think it can sometimes be a balancing act.