I worked with Steven Spielberg on Amistad... he seemed so very secure in himself that he let me do things.

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?

Every day I wake up and ask myself, ‘How can I accept myself and others more fully?

I am rich beyond the dreams of avarice.

Disrespect is my biggest pet peeve.

Yet love enters my blood like an I.V., dripping in its little white moments.

Our lives with all their miracles and wonders are merely a discontinuous string of incidents - until we create the narrative that gives them meaning

This matter of two sides to every question is bad logic and bad practice: sometimes there are no sides; sometimes there are a hundred.

We are each given a block of marble when we begin a lifetime, and the tools to shape it into sculpture... We can drag it behind us untouched, we can pound it into gravel, we can shape it into glory.

Whenever I see young girls wearing way too much makeup... you're young, you don't need that much.

We're still under the weight of this impression that the ocean is too big to fail, that the planet is too big to fail.

I love the intellectual type. They know everything and suspect nothing.