I wanted to be a musician but I didn't have the talent for it, so I decided I wanted to be famous, so I became an actor.

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?

Next to the first Henry and Meg, Henry had written, “Promise?” Well, that genie’s out of the bottle and there’s no stuffing her back in.

It's one thing if your hobby is to put ships inside a bottle, but a deer in the headlights!... That's a real talent

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18.

It is my experience that people who don't participate in society, who don't have jobs, who don't have friends, are just very stuck in irresponsibility and cultism and all kinds of nonsense.

I almost ran you down, remember? I have to be nice to you, so you don't have me arrested.

Murder is born of love, and love attains the greatest intensity in murder.

I'm a very nice guy, but don't mistake my kindness for weakness.

Hopeless implies that at one time there was hope. And that's another word I don't understand. Hope only exists for people who have choices. [Zarek]

Science is an integral part of culture. It's not this foreign thing, done by an arcane priesthood. It's one of the glories of the human intellectual tradition.

Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.