“I don’t think it does the audience any good to know what I do to prepare.”

For many years my acting came from a place of surmounting some enormous obstacle.

I used to watch the world as if it was a performance and I would realize that certain things that people did moved me, and certain things didn’t move me, and I tried to analyze.

I’m an actor. My life as an actor depends on who sends me what. I’m just taking the best stuff that I can find that’s sent my way, regardless of how big or little the paycheck is.

I see how the industry and the studios feel it’s important, but I don’t really have a feeling for being in competition.

I don’t live in L.A. on purpose because I don’t wanna be immersed in that. I have to have a real life, with real people.

Is it possible to have an endless series of successes without falling on our faces?

Most of the time, I’ve been really fortunate to work with people who are really fun to work with.

What I’ve learned about teaching is to refer back to the root of that word, which is educo, which means “to pull from.

You can begin to see an amalgamation of cultures, the real beginning of one world.

Incorporating it, somehow trying to work their way all together to a meaning of some kind, or at least a conclusion.

I don’t believe in competitions between artists. This is insane. Who has the authority to say someone is better?

Improvisation sometimes seemed more like jazz than acting, like verbal jazz, with the actors playing a theme back and forth, and then introducing another themeM

I played guitar. I’ve always considered myself an actor, but I wasn’t making a living as an actor. So I was in a couple of folk groups that managed to keep me in underwear and burritos.

That’s what we’re all doing, all the time, whether we know it or not. Whether we like it or not. Creating something on the spur of the moment with the materials at hand.

It’s murder to doubt yourself in life. It took until I was 45 to get to that point.

Every physicist knows that things connect with each other. To isolate things is not the way the universe works – winning best actor is arbitrary.

Sometimes when I perform, and it’s obvious the audience is just there to party, or if I feel a wall between me and the audience, I get existential about it.

I think the pressure gets to me when I play shows and there’s more people in the audience than I’m used to.

That really is my trademark. Day to day, week in, week out. If something happens and the crowd roars, I shut up.

When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, ‘Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don’t believe?’

Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.

If for the sake of a crowded audience you do wish to hold a lecture, your ambition is no laudable one, and at least avoid all citations from the poets, for to quote them argues feeble industry.

I have a genuine love affair with my audience. When I’m on stage they’re not privileged to see me. It’s a privilege for me to see them.

I love being on stage, I love being able to tell a story, I love the fact that the audience listens and laughs at it. It makes me happy, and it’s what I live for.