“To me the thing with ‘Grease’ was that it was the first movie that as a kid I wanted to get up and do what they were doing.”

To be honest with you, I’d rather not be working. When you work, there are all sorts of deadlines and pressures. I like to do one thing and take my time to do the other one.

You might get some serial killers who are born with a chip missing, but for the most part I don’t think anyone is born bad.

It depends, because sometimes an action role can be very demanding, and sometimes a dialogue-driven character can be very demanding, and vice versa. It depends.

Some roles have been with me forever

Hopefully, I can play both sides of the fence. That’s probably what winning the Oscar gives me, the chance to do something with a studio and do other things that I really want to do.

There’s a lot of Latinos right now, a lot of filmmakers and writers that are Latin too.

When some people get parts, they feel they can now relax, but for me it was always the opposite. Sometimes before I do a movie or before I act out a scene, I may not sleep well the night before. If I don’t know what the scene is about, I might get all worked up.

I’m a fan myself, so when a fan does something that might be strange, I understand it.

The very first things that I did, even in theater, were bad guys. They are meaty roles for the most part. With the bad guy you have more freedom to experiment and go further out than with a good guy.

You have to kill to survive. People have been doing it forever. I eat meat, and I eat fish. If I were on a deserted island I would need that to survive.

I get more choices of things, projects, which is a blessing and a curse. I can only do one at a time. Sometimes you don’t know which way to go.

I’ve liked most of the films that I’ve been in and those are the kinds of films I like to see.

I trained as a theatre actor and you had a bare stage and you had to pretend, one prop and you are in the middle of 8th Ave. and traffic is just going by.

You deal with failure – strike, strike, strike – all the time. Acting is like that. You have to have a very thick skin in a way – your hair is too dark, you’re too ugly for the part, your audition wasn’t good.

I don’t think I could be a foot soldier. I don’t know if I could take orders too good. I’m a little lazy.

I think that the Oscar gives you some kind of guts or something, it gives you the illusion that you can do it. It’s good for business.

The first thing that inspires any song is a chord progression. When I have one I really like, I get into the lyrics even more.

First feed the face, then talk right and wrong.

After all, we didn’t bring democracy to Germany in 1945; Hitler destroyed democracy there first.

The first records I heard were from Dizzy Gillespie and people like that.

To be influential in our conversations, we must first be aware of two things, (1) what do we want to bring to the conversation and (2) what do we want to bring out in others.

Now teach-ins are fairly common or they become common place. But in 1965, the Students for Democratic Society in Ann Harbor organized the first teach-in.

Forgiveness is, first of ali, a gift I give myself.

First the grub, then the morals.