Don’t use your conscious past. Use your creative imagination to create a past that belongs to your character. I don’t want you to be stuck with your own life. It’s too little.

Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.

The actor has to develop his body. The actor has to work on his voice. But the most important thing the actor has to work on is his mind.

The word theatre comes from the Greeks. It means the seeing place. It is the place people come to see the truth about life and the social situation.

When you stand on the stage you must have a sense that you are addressing the whole world, and that what you say is so important the whole world must listen.

You have to do something. If you do something, you become somebody. Even a daffodil does something, has a profession. It gives off scent, professionally.

You have to get beyond your own precious inner experiences.

You'll begin to act when you can forget your technique - when it is so securely inside you that you need not call upon it consciously.

You will only fail to learn if you do not learn from failing.

Actors need a kind of aggression, a kind of inner force. Don't be only one-sided, sweet, nice, good. Get rid of being average. Find the killer in you.

Happy children should not try to be artists. You have to be born with a broken heart and a sense of loneliness inside. I never had a happy moment as a child myself.

The truly revolutionary promise of our nation's founding document is the freedom to pursue happiness-with-a-capital-H.

Our ability to choose is sacred. It’s what makes humans special.

Crap, make one, two really bad decisions in your life, and you spend the rest of it doubting everything.

I didn't want to let women down. One of the stereotypes I see breaking is the idea of aging and older women not being beautiful.

At the end of the whole day of working with people you want some privacy.

The moment is ripe for an experienced businessman to talk practical, prudent economics to the electorate - which is why Mitt Romney's political fortunes are steadily being resurrected from the grave.

God, I wish you could have been there.

About age 30 most women think about having children, most men think about dating them.

We are defined by the places we hold in the web of others’ lives.

What hymns are sung. What praises said. For homemade miracles of bread?