This is something particular to actors, especially in plays, and in films, too - but in plays, it's like, don't get involved with anyone in the play.

There just doesn't seem to be a market for something with aspiration anymore.

I don't want to peak too early. The worry is that you never know until it's all over whether you peaked at all - and then you're finished and it's too late.

The film business is absurd. Stars don't last very long. It's much more interesting to be a proper actor.

I never did anything about my stardom, it never meant anything to me.

My occupation has been a great deal with David Foster Wallace, and he didn't manage it, and he was very much looking for something that isn't totally selfish, and finding meaning. It's a struggle.

I keep saying that backwards is all you can see. You can't see front. My wife says, "Stop, you're always in the past." She sees me sort of daydreaming.

I'm not religious. I love what Clive James said the other day. James is a brilliant writer, but he keeps on writing poems on stuff. And he said, "God doesn't have a leg to stand on."

My now-wife - we got together in '81, we married a few years after - she's been very good in the past about going in the theater with me to see actresses I had known. But then, she's not an actress.

It was still quite late when I got married, 30s, I don't know.

Death is more universal than life

I sincerely wish war was a pleasanter and easier business than it is, but it does not admit of holidays.

Who wills, Can. Who tries, Does. Who loves, Lives.

LA runs on optimism, enthusiasm and flattery. I think you can go a little bit crazy... It's just too damn sunny in every dimension - weatherwise, socially and professionally.

'We need to do more' is not very sophisticated thinking and not good sales management.

Rushing around smartly is no proof of accomplishing much.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves By each let this be heard Some do it with a bitter look Some with a flattering word The coward does it with a kiss The brave man with a sword

Adoption is rewarding. But the process, as we have already detailed in some particulars, can be expensive, exhausting, and hard to sustain on a dream, much less a whim.

Our pleasance here is all vain glory, This false warld is but transitory.

To know psychology, therefore, is absolutely no guarantee that we shall be good teacher.