When you're on stage with an audience, the director's nowhere to be seen. He's onto the next job.

Try and understand what part you have to play in the world in which you live. There's more to life than you know and it's all happening out there. Discover what part you can play and then go for it.

I often thought my gravestone would say, 'Here lies Gandalf. He came out,'

Acting is a very personal process. It has to do with expressing your own personality, and discovering the character you're playing through your own experience - so we're all different.

To know you are in the company with people who love and care for each other, as well as for whatever they are working on, is almost essential.

I’ve often thought the Bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying this is fiction.

You can always pick out stage actors at the Oscars: they know how to walk.

We are very lucky to be men because women have a terrible time getting older parts. It's much more difficult.

Personally, coming out was one of the most important things I've ever done, lifting from my shoulders the millstone of lies that I hadn't even realized I was carrying.

When you were on stage, you could be absolutely open about your emotions and indulge them and express yourself in a way that - in real life - I wasn't doing.

Splendid architecture, the love of your life, an old friend... they can all go drifting by unseen if youre not careful.

There were things I wanted to tell him. But I knew they would hurt him. So I buried them, and let them hurt me.

I remember that during the period leading up to independence in Angola in 1975, I was the only correspondent there at all for three months.

A youth, like a tree, needs pruning.

Everything that comes our way is so we can grow and evolve, and if we look at it like that, then we have the great opportunity to step into who we always wanted to be.

Watch the clouds. They will teach you about the world of form.

Why communitarian socialism? Now not only do we have the pursuit of happiness for man, as a government, as a program or as our principles. But as well to live in harmony with Mother Earth.

There are two parts to the process: taking the picture and finding ways of using it.

To get anywhere, or even to live a long time, a man has to guess, and guess right, over and over again, without enough data for a logical answer.

When you're young and fall off a horse, you may break something. When you're my age and you fall off, you splatter.

If I hadn’t left Texas, I might not have met the director Terrence Malick, and I wouldn’t have met my husband and I wouldn’t have had the children that I’ve had. Life is interesting like that.