We have developed this unbelievable ability to deny. We have to. If we didn't, we'd go crazy.

My recovery from manic depression has been an evolution, not a sudden miracle.

Reality is hard. It is no walk in the park, this thing called life.

I've come to believe that whoever I am didn't start on December 14, 1946, and isn't going to end on whatever that mysterious date is in the future

I can't tell you what I had for breakfast, but I can sing every single word of rock and roll

From the moment we walk out the door until we come back home our sensibilities are so assaulted by the world that we have to soak up as much love as we can get, simply to arm ourselves.

I tell people to monitor their self-pity. Self-pity is very unattractive.

When I'm 80 and sitting in a rocking chair listening to the Rolling Stones, there is absolutely no way I'm going to feel old or forget my younger days.

I still have highs and lows, just like any other person. What's missing is the lack of control over the super highs, which became destructive, and the super lows, which are immediately destructive.

Actors take risks all the time. We put ourselves on the line. It is creative to be able to interpret someone's words and breathe life into them.

Sometimes it is the simplest, seemingly most inane, most practical stuff that matters the most to someone.

It takes a man of unusual character to openly confront his own shortcomings. It’s so much more convenient to blame others.

But bringing people together is what music has always done best.

It is more informative how we treat things with no defined legal rights, than how we treat things with legal rights.

Sometimes when I hear my voice on tape, I'm like, 'Who is that horrible man?

When I work, I disappear into work, which I like to do, and sometimes I don't really have a choice. It's not a conscious thing. It's just total devotion to what I'm doing.

Religions are such stuff as dreams are made of.

More than once my mother would point out: "Harry Belafonte is the best-looking man on the planet."

He wound the scarf around his fingers until her hand was hanging in the space between them. Then he slid the silk and his fingers into her open palm. And Eleanor disintegrated.

Slander is the revenge of a coward, and dissimulation of his defense.

The thing about movies is if somebody has an idea that works, it's in, and I say that as a screenwriter as well as a director.