I mean, the problem is, I think I'm a great writer.

If we're talking about masculinity and tenderness, I don't look at Clinton.

I'd like to do more family dramas.

Through all the relationship stuff I've gone through in the past few years, I know there are fundamental differences in how men and women view sex and how they view their futures.

But I guess I like playing flawed guys 'cause it gives a place for the characters to go.

You never really know as an actor; it's completely out of your control, in terms of editing, and music, and film stock, shot selection, and what takes they use.

I can think of films that I'm producing right now that are extremely hard-hitting, graphic films, that nobody necessarily wants to see, graphic in terms of violence, of adult content and racial and historical subject matter.

If it helps me in the way that if this movie is successful, I get to make more films, great, and the more films that I make and the more interest that I'm allowed to cover, the better for me and the better, hopefully, for the people who like to watch me.

Some movies get rushed out right after you make them and I'm not always happy with that.

I don't do comedy so much although I would like to do a comedy.

I often feel that my days in New York City, that I was here for five years, didn't get one job, went on a thousands of auditions and literally did not get a job on a soap, not a movie, not TV, not nothing, although I did do some commercials thank God.

The F.B.I. is about nuts and bolts. It's all about witnesses and procedure and walking the streets.

I think that maybe that's my weakness, in that I don't know how to do it, so I just do what I do and try to do it as passionately and as well as I can.

I've been working for many years and I think I've managed to work with some of the best people in the business, which has been rewarding and an apprenticeship.

I always ask, why can't I be just like Cary Grant or something.

Yeah, but there's nobody who represents romance to me like Cary Grant.

But then, even with sex, I'm more in the school of less is more in movies.

When it gets down to it you just have to act.

A film has its own life and takes its own time.

Right now, I have to admit, that I'm more interested in giving people a little bit of hope and goodness.

I would love to get great performances from actors as a director, because that's what I'm always looking for, a director that's going to help me go places I've never been before.

It seems to me if you want something badly enough, whether you're a man or a woman, you'll do whatever you have to do to get it.

Yeah, I'd like to get the girl and at least make it through the film.

But I will say this: In my humble opinion, knowing nothing about it, I do believe that they have remote viewers working on where Osama Bin Laden is. I absolutely, 100%, convinced of that.

I'm an actor and it happened to go my way that day.

I got as much information as I could, so I wouldn't look stupid, but this is a post 9/11 world and there's only so much you can do with the FBI in terms of research.

I mean, the problem is, I think I'm a great writer.

I think every actor wants to be an FBI or cop at one point.

Some movies I see today have the most dramatic plot points but the actors are not playing them dramatically.

Directors, producers can make you look good or make you look bad.

I think women can be as cruel as men, and men as tender as women, and vice versa.

I'd like to do a romantic comedy.

It makes me feel good that I can now sit there and go, I've worked with Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, all the great actors that I've worked with... Sir Ben Kingsley.

I'm sort of fascinated by the whole espionage crime thing.

There are different reasons to make movies.

Well, I've thought many times when my career was in the toilet, that I was going to have to seriously consider getting another job, I don't know what I'd do.

I would like to direct.

I think America right now is looking for somebody who appeals to every faction.

I think they are very important because westerns have a code and a symbolism.

Arnold Bennett was a writer I admired. He was actually taking notes at his father's deathbed.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

For a country to have a great writer is like having another government. That's why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.

A true critic ought to dwell upon excellencies rather than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation.

A writer may tell me that he thinks man will ultimately become an ostrich. I cannot properly contradict him.

The most important training, though, is to experience life as a writer, questioning everything, inventing multiple explanations for everything. If you do that, all the other things will come; if you don't, there's no hope for you.

It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.

Every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it and the writer learns how to know it when he finally gets there.