“The play is the source, it is orchestrated with words. In a movie, you are not dealing with as much as that. There are machines and wires.”

It used to worry me what people said about me. I’m learning not to worry as much.

Everything changes with age. The parts change with age, your feelings about them change, roles that I would’ve wanted to play 10 years ago, I don’t want to play now.

The camera can film my face but until it captures my soul, you don’t have a movie.

I do Shakespeare when I am feeling a certain way.

It wasn’t until I got older that I realized acting was something I could really do.

I did it in Looking for Richard, too. And I figure, if I can weave it into the actual play and get the audience interested, like the robes going up and down, they’ll pay attention long enough to consume it.

To be really obvious about something, if somebody straps an M1 on your shoulder and throws you in Iraq.

If I was a painter no one would question me about my age. I’m an artist, I hate saying that.

Chekhov was as important to me as anybody as a writer.

So I’ve been doing everything that has to do with being next to them, close to them.

[Julie Marie Pacino]is a great ballplayer, which I wanted to be. She did make four films by the time she was 14 but we’re not going to talk about that.

I picked the wrong movie, or I didn’t pursue a character, but everything you do is part of you and you get something from it.

The stage is different ; there’s more to act. There are more demands put on you, more experiences to go through.

I am a dancer. But I don’t think I would be on ‘Dancing with the Stars,’ mainly because I would be too shy.

Take a look at Israel’s history and you would know who the terrorist is.

They cost nothing, and they can be as real as you like to make them. You own your dreams and they are priceless.

I have concluded through careful empirical analysis and much thought that somebody is looking out for me, keeping track of what I think about things, forgiving me when I do less than I ought.

That is much of what I think the writer’s job is – to slow people down.

This is because there is much more risk.

I actually had less time and the exact same budget on Hairspray, which was few years ago and this is a much bigger movie [then Rock of Ages]. That’s the way studios do it now.

But yeah I’m very much a spontaneous guy and it’s sort of hard for me to multi-task and to have all these things going on at once.

Well, that was kind of fun, wasn’t it? I mean, I don’t see where this could go, because we pretty much did everything. But it was fun.”

I find it’s too much for me to read endless critiques, even if we’re being well-defended, of exactly what we’re doing.

When I’m directing, I’m pretty much not writing, but when I’m not directing I am writing a lot.