“I hate to compare anything, especially while I’m promoting. I feel that’s another disrespect, but ‘Ocean’s 13’ is the best movie I’ve ever done in my life. No question.”

I want people to say at the end of my day, you know, like I used to say about Sidney Poitier and James Cagney and Joan Crawford and Red Skelton and those guys and Bill Cosby. They did quality and substance. You always remember them.

The one thing about comedy, making it become a part of you, the audience loves it, because you become part of them.

People like rumors. They’re going to say things like, ‘You was at the club with Lil’ Kim, and you and Kanye West got into a fist fight.’ You can’t get upset. You’ve got to keep hope alive.

I want to play a villain – I can’t wait to play a villain.

I’m an ordinary guy with an extraordinary job.

I don’t ever watch myself. By watching, you try to perfect yourself, become a robot.

I want to do something that people can really say, ‘Hey, man, that was good, I’m proud of you, I’m proud of that.’ ‘Pride’ and ‘Transformers’ and things like that.

I’ve never been no superficial cat.

Comedy has been so good to me.

Whatever success I’ve had, I always like to top it.

I don’t care about how I look; I’m dedicated to the laughs. You know, I used to be a clown, so – my name was Smoothie the Clown. All the training I had, all my training is geared toward making people laugh, and I didn’t care about being cool.

Jerry Weintraub, the producer, might be a pain in the ass, but he really knows how to treat his actors.

That’s the whole key to anything: Don’t be afraid to fail. And is not afraid to fail.

I hate to let people down. I was like that in sports and I was like that in comedy. I was like that at work. When I worked General Motors and stuff like that, when I say something, I mean it.

You don’t see me in Los Angeles a lot. I go back home. Because I can’t play the game. I can’t – my tolerance – I know I’m getting old; I’ll be 50 this year. And you know how I know I’m getting old? ‘Cause my tolerance level is low.

Only way you can you get upset is when you expecting something.

If you deny any affinity with another person or kind of person, if you declare it to be wholly different from yourself.

Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.

But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.

I can’t do this because I can’t…I can’t be the man I want to be with you. And that means that this – this just becomes…another reminder of what I am not.

The superiority of one man’s opinion over another’s is never so great as when the opinion is about a woman.

… it is one thing to like defiance, and another thing to like its consequences.

For me, being with Obama or having dinner with Bill Clinton… it’s crazy. It’s mind-blowing, because where I come from is just another world. We were just ignored by politicians – by America in general.

If you’re not ready to do a non-stop dialogue with fashion, you should do another job.