“That’s where humour lives for me. In the body. The Steve Martin kind of stuff or Jim Carrey, that’s what I like. I’ve always felt that’s what I would like to do.”

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.

If you pursued something that you felt strongly about, then I call that success.

Later when asked what it felt like, I said, “It felt as though angels were pushing”.

Someone asked me…how it felt and I was reminded of a story that a fellow-townsman of ours used to tell–Abraham Lincoln.

I’ve never really felt that I’ve had the right hair cut, or had the right clothes.

When I was younger, I felt like I could say anything and it was funny.

You kind of have to learn how to adapt yourself, and I felt a really powerful way to do that was to make people laugh.

Shaq is Shaq. I did an episode of The Soup with Shaq, and he shook my hand, and I felt like I was a Ken doll, like I had no hand.

I’ve never really felt good at the parties, but I have enough friends now that I feel social, I used to feel very antisocial, but I think the theater helps.