“If you can identify with people, you can empathize with people and therefore you understand things.”

There is only one way of surviving all the early heartbreaks in this business. You must have a sense of humor. And I think it also helps if you are a dreamer. I had my dreams all right. And that is something no one can ever take away.

Early on in my career, I remember running – fleeing – to the theater as a way of coping with all the meshugaas that was going on for me.

Women have always had equal importance onstage, and working with them must have altered my sensibilities.

Their minds, the way in which they se the world is so striking, the way they juxtapose things, the way they can see humor in people. There’s a liberation in that.

When my mother got home from work, she would take me to the movies.

My children can make me feel rejected. They can humble you pretty quick.

I’ve never cared for guns. In fact, when I did ‘Scent of a Woman’ I had to learn how to assemble one.

I don’t feel like a person who takes risks. Yet there’s something within me that must provoke controversy because I find it wherever I go.

Sometimes what we imagine and the world aren’t different things.

I like, for instance, ‘Serpico.’ I enjoyed playing Serpico because Frank Serpico was there. He existed. He was a real life person and I could – I could embody him. I could, you know.

People are always asking me to do Shakespeare – at home, at colleges, on film locations, in restaurants. It’s like playing a piece of music, getting all the notes. It’s great therapy.

It’s very evocative; it’s like a first cut because you hear ‘She walked to the door,’ and you visualize all these things. ‘She opens the door’ . . . because you read the stage directions, too.

It surprised me, the feeling I got when I won the Oscar for ‘Scent of a Woman.’ It was a new feeling. I’d never felt it.

I don’t understand the hatred and fear of gays and bisexuals and lesbians… it’s a concept I honestly cannot grasp.

We’re charlatans in a way, we’re magic people. Part of the behind the scenes stuff is to loosen you up, to make you feel that you are experiencing this. This is my style.

That was the first thing I was struck by, not by the acting, not by anything else, but by the physicality.

My interest is always to get as deeply as I can into the minds and spirits of the characters and let the readers empathize or judge as they will.