I could stay making nice safe BBC movies for the rest of my life, so I decided to risk it. It was a challenge, to work with Oliver Stone.

My philosophy is: It's none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what I am, and I do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And it makes life so much easier.

We are dying from overthinking. We are slowly killing ourselves by thinking about everything. Think. Think. Think. You can never trust the human mind anyway. It's a death trap.

Life's too short to deal with other people's insecurities.

No expectations. Ask nothing, expect nothing and accept everything, and life is very well.

A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

I don't believe in nepotism. I don't much like the idea of parents who interfere.

Relish everything that's inside of you, the imperfections, the darkness, the richness and light and everything. And that makes for a full life.

The whole point of courage, to overcome your fear. That's the interesting thing, when courage bleeds through the fear.

I always liked to take the plunge, you know, I'd jump in at the deep end and hope that I'd find land somehow, or hope I'd float or survive. That's more or less the way I've gone through my life.

You're not more than one generation from poor white trash, are you, Agent Starling?

There are things that can be fixed with an apology and things that can't.

It was as if we'd known each other for a thousand years.

Ignore the negativity in your life. Right now I'm taking bullets for other people and sometimes in life that's where courage comes from.

If the picture needs varnishing later, I allow a restorer to do that, if there's any restoring necessary.

The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think worth describing in detail.

All property and all forms of wealth are produced by man's mind and labor.

There is no place in which to hide when Age comes seeking for his bride.

If there is to be no satisfaction in pleasure, none in wisdom, none in ambition, none in the golden mean, what then? Ah, where then? In duty. In doing right because it is right.

I shook hands with a friendly Arab. I still have my right arm to prove it.