“I can’t hit on women in public any more. I didn’t decide this; it just doesn’t feel right at my age.”

The average celebrity meets, in one year, ten times the amount of people that the average person meets in his entire life.

My motto is more good times.

Frankly, I got into the movies because I like the movies a lot.

With my sunglasses on, I’m Jack Nicholson. Without them, I’m fat and 60.

It’s a slight stretch of the imagination but most people are alike in most ways so I’ve never had any trouble identifying with the character that I’m playing.

I don’t think many people have a very good understanding of leisure and the importance it plays in our lives.

There’s only two people in your life you should lie to… the police and your girlfriend.

A lot of people can’t remember things because they weren’t actually there to begin with – they don’t take it all in.

Well, a girlfriend once told me never to fight with anybody you don’t love.

Acting is everybody’s favorite second job.

Well, I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I haven’t been a rogue most of my life.

Played tennis for years. But you can’t improve at tennis after you’re 50. You get to be in your 40s, and suddenly you’re a doubles player.

Beer, it’s the best damn drink in the world.

Almost everybody’s happy to be a fool for love.

The minute that you’re not learning I believe you’re dead.

I’m content with the fact that I made a decent effort. That’s what I’ve always worried about: that I wouldn’t try hard enough.

When I’m, like, 30, I want to go off the map, have a family and live in Malibu with a farm, and just raise my own chickens.

From a very young age I had an ambition to be a musician, and to do that professionally. That’s what I pursued until I was about 20, playing in bands that were taken pretty seriously at that stage.

Count Basie practically adopted me at 13. We became closer and closer and I ended up conducting for him and Sinatra.

To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind.

I don’t have any issues with my age.

I don’t want to be made to look like I’m 25. I’m 39. I don’t have any issues with my age.

I’ve been in the public eye for about 15 or 16 years and I’m very aware that fame is not a given. I have to maintain it. It’s not just something that will always be there.

Age, with his eyes in the back of his head, thinks it wisdom to see the bogs through which he has floundered.