“I’ve never been a jealous person, and I’ve never felt built up by someone else’s failure – that’s a cheap thrill.”

There’s a difference in thinking you are a champion and knowing that you are.

My whole family are hams. They’re storytellers and everyone outdoes the next one.

We have a big appetite for putting people down but, at the heart of everyone, there’s enough room for all of us to succeed.

I don’t know how to work a room. It’s a real skill.

I think the discipline comes with turning that cellphone and Blackberry off and unplugging completely.

You do that and you go through some withdrawals in the beginning. You start thinking, ‘Oh, do I need to do this? Do I need to do that?’ You forget that we were doing just fine with the payphone.

I’ve never been a manipulator, even in my bachelor days. I never wanted to do things to people that could catch up with me later on.

I didn’t want anybody’s name on my backside. I personally don’t like to wear clothing that is named for somebody or has someone’s likeness all over it.

I’ve got a great sense of humor, and if I’m able to say or do something in a movie that people feel like they want to repeat, that’s hugely flattering.

I like the city. I like the concrete. I like big business. I like being a CEO of my own company and having a lot of responsibilities.

Africa is probably one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.

One of the great pleasures of going to see a Daniel Day-Lewis film: you haven’t seen him in five years. Where have you been?

I don’t choose to insulate myself in engaging in real life. Hence, the public kind of almost knows me as much through my real life that they see through the rag mags.

Life is a series of commas, not periods.

I go on The Daily Beast. The Daily Beast is one of the websites that I check out.

In whatever adulation you get, there’s truth and there’s not truth. And wherever they dog you, and they say it was horrible – there’s truth and there’s not truth. It’s human nature to like to read the adulation more.

It’s always been my formula to get the next picture set up before anyone’s seen the last one.

Why it’s been left to me to smooth things over, I don’t know. Dennis Rodman, of all people.

The trouble with me is that for a long time I have just been an I person.

I asked a girl who came from America to England, when I was only English, and she admitted she had been to a drama school. And I said, “What did they teach you?” And she said, “They taught me to be a candle burning in an empty room.”

Assists is what Earvin is all about. That’s what my whole life has been, assisting others.

It has not yet been recorded that any human being has gained a very large or permanent contentment from meditation upon the fact that he is better off than others.

I’ve stopped wanting a home, I think, because I’ve been on tour all my life, basically.

I love Oklahoma. The fans have been with me every night. What more can you ask for?