“Hollywood is a cross between a health farm, a recreation center and an insane asylum. It’s a company town, and I happen to like the company!”

Save your money. You’re going to need twice as much money in your old age as you think.

The best research for playing a drunk is being a British actor for 20 years.

You’ve got to be flexible. Directors do a massive amount of planning and homework, and if after all that your director decides to throw it all out of the window and shoot spontaneously, then you must follow his lead.

Some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

I never bring a role home with me. The moment they say, ‘It’s a wrap,’ it’s gone completely. I’m a totally ruthless professional, and life is my family, not my work.

In film, other actors’ performances really are not your concern. If the other actor isn’t giving you what you want, act as though he were.

I never regret anything. I always said that when I’m old, I want to be sitting there regretting the things that I did and not the things that I didn’t do; and now I’m old, and I don’t regret anything! I had fun. I had fun, and I’m still having it.

A lot of people said, Who do you think you are? I told them I know exactly who I am and I’ll tell you exactly where I’m going.

I have been rich and I have been poor. I know which one I prefer.

Books were my window on the world. Growing up at the Elephant and Castle, which was very rough, my paradise was the library.

Great acting is about listening to what they are saying not waiting to deliver your lines.

That to me is what my idea of film acting should be. There shouldn’t be any acting. You should just be watching a real person.

People say to me, why did you do those films, and I say, for money. It wasn’t for diamond rings or kidney shaped swimming pools in Beverly Hills, it was in order to improve the lot of everyone around me.

You can’t get blase about something you haven’t done yet.

When it comes to politics, I believe you have to cut the cake so that everybody gets a piece, but at the same time, you have to keep in mind that somebody has to make the cake.

English is clipped in speech. Texas is exactly the opposite.

By nature, I keep moving, man. My theory is, be the shark. You’ve just got to keep moving. You can’t stop.

In the 1960s, The National Education Association changed its character. The NEA changed into a union. And from that point on you can see deterioration in the quality of schooling in the United States.

A person is an individual substance of a rational nature.

Whoever recounts to you the faults of your neighbour will doubtless expose your defects to others.

When you oppose the shaykh, it’s like the slave who kills himself over a quarrel with his master. ‘Hey, why are you killing yourself over a quarrel?’ He says, ‘So my master will suffer loss.’

As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?

What then remains, but well our power to use, And keep good-humor still whate’er we lose? And trust me, dear, good-humor can prevail, When airs, and flights, and screams, and scolding fail.

We shall never be clothed with the righteousness of Christ except we first know assuredly that we have no righteousness of our own.