It's always a pleasure to see John. I'm fond of telling people that when I was a young actor in NY and had no work ,no money, you know the story because you're heard it before.

To create characters, one must build background. And one of the tools we use is improvisation.

That's like asking a cobbler if he's made too many pairs of shoes.

The way I see things, the way I see life, I see it as a struggle. And there's a great deal of reward I have gained coming to that understanding - that existence is a struggle.

I believe every day when I wake up and go to bed and during my dreaming time there's some moment of truth that's in front of me that will always be in front of me until the end of days.

Everything is difficult, and everything worthwhile is difficult. A certain need, a need not unlike Mickey had: to know, to understand, and I had that need to understand and to know.

You didn't hear the angels singing. It was brought down to Mother Earth, which is where it should be. And that led me to a lot of other reading.

You're working on being a father, so that is something that when you experience it you'll understand the profundity of wanting to protect something dear to you.

Uhm, I'm the one wanting the lessons! I don't want to say too much about it because I'd rather have you see the movie, but he's trying to find his music.

They have equal weight and you do the same work you'd do if you were playing a dramatic role.

What fascinated me mostly about Mickey Cohen was that he, in his later years, hired someone to help him to comprehend literature, to help him to read better, to understand words better.

Maybe it's just a daughter's job to piss off her mother.

Horrible the fate of the advice-giver in our culture: to repeat oneself in a thousand contexts until death, or irrelevance.            *I abjure advice-giver.

The waste basket is the writer's best friend.

While the United States has been busy creating lawyers, we have been busier creating engineers.

We are pregnant with freedom.

Understanding of life begins with the understanding of patterns.

Simplicity, a delicate silence about oneself, increases their worth and makes one love those whom one admires.

God created man in his own image. And man, being a gentleman, returned the favor.

There's really kind of nobody we can trust.

Which was worse: a friend with brain damage, or one who despised you?