“I have never seen it but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built and it is terrific.”

The old guys like me started in the theatre. I was in the theatre for nine years.

When I look in the mirror, I see someone who’s happy with how he looks, because I was never one of the handsome Hollywood people. And I’ve had success as I’ve gotten older, because I’m able to play characters. I no longer get the girl, but I get the part.

Movie acting is about covering the machinery. Stage acting is about exposing the machinery. In cinema, you should think the actor is playing himself, if he’s that good. It looks very easy. It should. But it’s not, I assure you.

In my opinion, everybody is getting older and older. We have a great deal of dementia because nobody grew old enough to get it.

I’ve never taken drugs – if you take a drug of your choice, you get some ecstatic feeling.

I never listened to the people who said I should give it up, which is the main advice I got.

Obsession is a young man’s game, and my only excuse is that I never grew old.

Acting is not a competition; everything must be done for the good of the film or else everybody loses.

I don’t see myself as anything. I just wander around getting on with my life.

First of all, I choose the great roles, and if none of these come, I choose the mediocre ones, and if they don’t come, I choose the ones that pay the rent.

Be patient.Of course it will come. It took me years to get an Oscar.

Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.

There was a certain moment. I was about 61 – two, three or four, and I got a script. And I sent it back to the producer saying – “I don’t wanna do it. The part’s too small.” And he sent it back to me, he said, “You shouldn’t read the lover. You should read the father.

I prefer to remake flops. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was a remake of a flop, and The Quiet American is a remake of a flop.

I never look back at all. All of my sentiment and emotion goes into my family. I’m an extremely family oriented person and I have a very, very happy family life. That doesn’t just include blood relations. I have friends who are close to me.

I think life has got to develop as you get older, and I don’t want to be wandering along doing the same old thing. I want more out of life.

Educate yourself, hold the people around you accountable, seek ways to help, and don’t sit on the sidelines.

Sometimes you gotta take accountability for the way you feel no matter what a person puts you through.

On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.

Money doesn’t mean anything to me. I’ve made a lot of money, but I want to enjoy life and not stress myself building my bank account.

Forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?

Pig power in America was infuriating, but pig power in the communist framework was awesome and unaccountable.

A girl is a good deed and a boy is a bounty. Good deeds are rewarded while people are held accountable for bounties.

We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.