“You have to have an almost boundless reservoir of energy and interest to enter politics because quite often it’s thankless and fruitless and you can’t accomplish much.”

When I tried to branch out into comedy, I didn’t do very well at it, so I went back to doing what I do naturally well, or what the audience expects from me – action pictures.

Through failure, I found different ways to reverse my problems and get into the mainstream of Hollywood.

I tell people diets don’t work. And I don’t care what they say. I have tried them all.

I’m not handsome in the classical sense. The eyes droop, the mouth is crooked, the teeth aren’t straight, the voice sounds like a Mafioso pallbearer, but somehow it all works.

I was very much into buying contemporary art, but I’ve just decided I want to get rid of it all. Not that it’s not great art, but all of a sudden my mood has changed, and I want to go back to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century masters.

All good actors are unpredictable, and a little crazy in a good way, because they feel more secure playing other people than themselves.

I think kids growing up, if they were picked on and feeling inferior at 12, they’re going to feel that way at 72. You just deal with it better. I’m serious.

If you express yourself too much, you’re considered weak.

Making a movie is the same as an orchestra; it’s moving all the different instruments and the sounds, the kinetic and the auditory and the visual all together. I’m probably the trombone.

All young men want to prove themselves.

Nothing is real if you don’t believe in who you are!

When you’re pushed killing is as easy as breathing.

A lot of guys don’t want to admit that they have a propensity for generosity and for violence.

Success is usually the culmination of controlling failure.

Don’t be gullible, use life before it uses you. Understand there are no free lunches, and for every action you take, there’s a reaction.

Most action is based on redemption and revenge, and that’s a formula. Moby Dick was formula. It’s how you get to the conclusion that makes it interesting.

As for accomplishments, I just did what I had to do as things came along.

Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine

You can accomplish great things.

Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.

I’m a firm believer in goal setting. Step by step. I can’t see any other way of accomplishing anything.

If you never take risks, you’ll never accomplish great things. Everybody dies, but not everyone has lived.

Let the future tell the truth and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.

Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.