Playing Shakespeare requires technique. You don't play a Bach toccata by getting in the mood.

I think every American actor wants to be a movie star. But I never wanted to do stupid movies, I wanted to do films.

The worth of a life is not determined by a single failure or a solitary success.

I'm a real pushover for animals.

The technique's many benefits for actors include minimized tension, centeredness, vocal relaxation, and responsiveness, mind/body connection and about an inch and a half of additional height.

Hindsight. It's like foresight without a future.

I've got the Jewish guilt and the Irish shame and it's a hell of a job distinguishing which is which.

Most of the comedies I've done have been rather farcical and extravagant.

But, I do think, on a very simplistic level, that we can project onto dogs because they are so innocent. They don't come with a lot of baggage.

I totally related to Cole Porter's magnetic pull to any piano that was in the room, which he was famous for doing, as was Gershwin. You couldn't drag them away from a piano.

Just because you're not sweating doesn't mean you're not putting in the work.

I find friendship to be like wine, raw when new, ripened with age, the true old man's milk and restorative cordial.

It is not customary to love what one has.

Probably they had good reason for omitting it. A profane mind might make a jest of an apostle half seas over, and ridicule an apostolic gate-keeper who couldn't keep his head above water.

You have to understand that people that are hurting are going to criticize.

Brutes find out where their talents lie; a bear will not attempt to fly.

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? ... Or does it explode?

Somewhere beyond the sink-hole, past the magnolia, under the live oaks, a boy and a yearling ran side by side, and were gone forever.

I've spent the first part of my life in the shadow of my family. I'm not going to live in the shadow of my husband.

Daughters are supposed to be friends to their mothers in their old age.

God is not in heaven - God is in the present moment. If you are also in the present moment you enter the temple.