As an actor, you live a little bit of a cloistered life. It's a lonely life. You oddly, strangely find yourself all alone, quite often, with a lot of time to think.

That's probably the biggest secret of acting: If the actor believes it themselves, they can make you believe it.

Acting is the business of truth, so that we can see ourselves reflected back and learn.

Being an actor on a movie set is like going to the playground at recess.

The power of television - it's so present in our lives, we don't even know how powerful it is.

The key to acting has much more to do with listening than with talking.

I'm a little bit of a glutton for punishment, especially when it comes to work. I don't mind a bit of suffering. I think it's in suffering that we realize our best selves.

I am a smoker, I'm ashamed to say. I had given it up for many years, then picked it up again. It's a horrible habit. I struggle with myself all the time. And I love to smoke.

The climate informs the character.

I think this notion of acting and glamour is getting in everybody's way.

I have some close friends I keep in touch with. I knit. I watch a little too much TV. I ski, if the weather's right for that. If I can find a group of buddies, I go rock climbing.

But maybe you see beauty in me because you are beautiful, not because I am.

It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones slept better, [Cloquet thought, ] while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more.

Hardship often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny.

When a man can observe himself suffering and is able later to describe what he's gone through it means he was born for literature.

It takes me three or four years to research and write each book and the individual stories stay with you for a long time afterwards.

If you are an inventor, then you are destined for blood, sweat and tears.

Order is man's greatest need, and his true well-being.

When people are very damaged, they can often meet the world with a kind of defiance.

The older you get, the more voices you get in the back of your head.

Let the gulled fool the toil of war pursue, where bleed the many to enrich the few.