“A friend of my mom’s was a casting director so, really as kind of a lark, I had a couple of acting jobs that had just enough exposure to give me the option to continue if I wanted to. I followed through with it.”

My mother went to Radcliffe, and rather than just trying to get rich, she wanted to be a teacher and taught for over 30 years in the public schools. She’s definitely got some war stories.

You have to pay people real money.

No actor forgets the times he couldn’t get a job. I think everyone doing this operates from that fear. You don’t want that momentum to stop when you get it.

If we try to define our own moral universe, there’s a price for that.

Anybody tells you that money is the root of all evil doesn’t have any.

But when I felt like I had something to prove? Then I got up early every morning and worked all day long. I didn’t know if I had any more talent than anyone else directing, but I knew I could work hard at it, and so I did.

You wasted $150,000 on an education you could have got for a buck fifty in late charges at the public library.

You get old, you slow down.

You don’t know what the pattern of flour and chicken is going to be, but you know you’re going to get some good fried chicken.

I find forgiveness to be really healthy.

You have to be kind to people. Treat them decently. There’s no excuse for not.

It’s important for me to try my hand at philanthropy because I want to leave behind a record of someone who did more than just gobble up stuff for themselves. I realized that a life lived for yourself is not much of a life.

All I do, really, is go to work and try to be professional, be on time and be prepared.

Memories, all those little experiences make up the fabric of our lives and on balance, I wouldn’t want to erase any of them, tempting though it may be.

I kinda see my current position like this: Here’s your five minutes in the toy store, so you gotta do all the good movies you can before ‘Chuck Woolery’ rings the bell.

Every single director-actor I talked to, from Warren Beatty to Clint Eastwood to George Clooney, said the biggest mistake they made is not shooting enough footage of themselves.

The time I’m not spending with my kid has to be worth it, so when I sat down with my agents after I was ready to go back to work, I told them: It’s all about the directors.

Any film that you see is never just the director. If it’s a film that you love, it’s not so easy to say, “Oh it’s directed by this person – that means everything that person directs is going be wonderful.”

I’ve directed independent film.

Unfortunately, in Hollywood, there are those directors that have some contempt for actors. We’ve all experienced that, in one way or another.

Stallone is a pretty tough director. You don’t mess with him.

All the films are hits before you turn the camera on. It’s only in the execution that they fail. I’ve been less than happy with the way a couple of films were edited, but it’s a director’s prerogative and you gotta go with it.

Laughter is, above all, a corrective. Being intended to humiliate, it must make a painful impression on the person against whom it is directed. By laughter, society avenges itself for the liberties taken with it. It would fail in its object if it bore the stamp of sympathy or kindness.

Some of my best experiences are with writer/directors. Guy Ritchie is one. I feel they have a clearer view of what they want to do. They haven’t got to try and interpret someone’s writing; it’s all theirs. I really admire that.