“The other one, and probably an equal pleasure, is finding out how I can be helpful and then really being helpful.”

Everyone opens up to one another right away. That’s a terrific thing. I love that about actors. They know how personal this job is.

The best things said come last. People will talk for hours saying nothing much and then linger at the door with words that come with a rush from the heart.

For humans, flying isn’t magic, it’s physics.

We’re highly social animals – I’m told by scientists that what makes us different from other animals is an acute social awareness, which is what has made us so successful.

What works for me is working out when it’s useful to use that anger.

They’re supposed to be gigantic explosions and they’re just these insignificant little dots. If you step back from things far enough you realize how important and powerful you are.

Insanity is just a state of mind.

I used to be a Catholic. I left because I object to conversion by concussion. If you don’t agree with what they teach, you get clobbered over the head until you do. All that does is change the shape of the head.

I’ll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash and carry, carry me back to Old Virginia, I’ll even ‘hari-kari’ if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun!

What I always wanted to get seen as was as a good actor, when it was the acting I was doing.

What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.

When I’m willing to let them change me, something happens between us that’s more interesting than a pair of dueling monologues.

Some of the greatest things, as I understand, they have come about by serendipity, the greatest discoveries

I’ve sat looking down into a volcano that could blow at any moment; I’ve helped catch a shark and several rattlesnakes;

Listening is being able to be changed by the other person.

You’ll be a lot less likely to be caught up in bias or prejudice or be influenced by people who ask you to hand over your brains, your soul or your money because they have everything all figured out for you.

Like, how does age and circumstance equate to some kind of personality trait?

Sadness doesn’t equal weakness, sweetheart. If anything, it shows the love you have inside of you, and nothing stronger in this world exists.

Now you have the equal opportunity to equip yourself through information and knowledge and express yourself as an independent mind.

Baathism in Iraq equals Nazism in Germany.

There is something frightful in being required to enjoy and appreciate all masterpieces; to read with equal relish Milton, and Dante, and Calderon, and Goethe, and Homer, and Scott, and Voltaire, and Wordsworth, and Cervantes, and Molière, and Swift.

The piano and the singing are two equal things to me – maybe not inseparable but very connected. You can say they are like two equal voices.

The basic notion of justice, is that the rights of everybody are equals, in principle. In the rights of others, we have to respect our own rights. It is only in that condition that we can reasonnably require that it be respected by others.

Only to have a grief equal to all these tears!