“There will come a day when the phone doesn’t ring as much as it used to.”

Just because you’re from the minimalist school, it doesn’t mean you can’t go big.

I think there’s a down-to-earthness with Midwesterners and with people from the Midlands – which is where my family is from – in Ireland.

Make them laugh, and then make them listen.

There’s certainly more work for me in TV these days.

I get to do interesting roles and make a living.

I mean, I’ve been stupid in the past, and I’ve learned from that.

You should learn to be happy with what you have. Besides, the fact that I’m not a huge star has allowed me to pick and choose the roles I want to do, not the ones some person sitting in a studio office thinks I should do.

I don’t. I almost never get in shape for a movie, even though I know it would be a good career move.

My thing about looking good is that it should be the character.

If I’m playing a character who’s concerned about his body – an athlete, say – I’ll get in shape. If I’m playing a character who doesn’t or wouldn’t,

I don’t get any parts I don’t get offered. There are lots of great things out there I would like to do that I don’t get offered.

Really, most of us just focus on what’s in front of us. We’re too busy putting out the fires of everyday life.

Being physically away from Hollywood probably loses me a few jobs, but the best ones seek me out.

I’m not particularly a career-oriented guy. I’m lucky. I can make really interesting films much of the time with interesting people yet be anonymous, have a private life. But, I’d like to have the choice of the better roles.

Celebrity, to me, is not a thing to seek.

I’m not a city kind of guy. I’m happiest when I’m tromping through the woods.

Full little knowest thou that hast not tried, What hell it is in suing long to bide: To loose good dayes, that might be better spent; To waste long nights in pensive discontent; To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow; To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow.

Though leaves are many, the root is one; Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun Now I may wither into the truth.

Nowhere else than upon the sea do the days, weeks, and months fall away quicker into the past. They seem to be left astern as easily as the light air-bubbles in the swirls of the ship’s wake.

The childhood shows the man, as morning shows the day.

So passeth, in the passing of a day, Of mortal life the leaf, the bud, the flower.

Live every day as your last, because one of these days, it will be.

It is one of the enjoyments of retirement that you are able to drift through the day at your own pace, easy in the knowledge that you have put hard work and achievement behind you.

Every dog must have his day.