Acting is easy and fun. You earn a lot of money, and you bang out with girls. The profession is given tremendous significance within our society, but it's not really worthy of it.

I'd like to thank the academy and I'd like to thank my mother and I'd like to thank my mother again, because I forgot to thank her last year.

The script is the coloring book that you’re given, and your job is to figure out how to color it in. And also when and where to color outside the lines.

I lost interest in firearms because we had a dog that was scared to death of the sound of a rifle shot.

Working in theater, film or television are three different jobs for an actor, and I accept them as such.

Love is the one emotion actors allow themselves to believe.

I think also there's no question that Lincoln has been diluted down through history in some way, almost by becoming as iconic as he is, in a way he's become diluted.

I think that Barack Obama faces a level of divisiveness, and I don't mean on a national level in terms of the North and the South and the Civil War; I really mean just politically.

Sometimes with people their work is the most important thing to them, and sometimes the work enables you to do other things that are more important to you. I probably am closer to that.

The first perk of theatre is the girls.

If I don't need the money, I don't work.

We are no longer in the dispensation of age and experience. We are in the era of knowledge and information. Information leads a true leader and a true leader leads others.

Not stupid. Overly trusting, maybe, but that reflects on his lack of trustworthiness, not on your intelligence.

If you don’t take the time to get really clear about exactly what it is you’re trying to accomplish, then you’re forever doomed to spend your life achieving the goals of those who do.

All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.

Slowly we adjust, but only if we have to.

Take heede of the viniger of sweet wine.

I don't see any independent position that I'm in; it's rather inter-dependent.

Perseverance is a great element of success.

When the days start to get shorter, I want to be in some nice brick building on the East Coast with the lights glowing in the windows. When the daylight starts changing, I want to be out West.

Meanwhile, the empty forms of social behavior survive inappropriately in business situations. We all know that when a business sends its customers 'friendly reminders,' it really means business.