Brad Pitt

I would say that the directors that I've liked the most are all curious in nature - curious thinkers. They're all big questioners, I would say, first and foremost.

I was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma.

By the time this concert ends this evening, 30,000 Africans will have died because of extreme poverty. By this time tomorrow evening, another 30,000. This does not make sense.

At the end of the day, we get to be parents, greeting our lovely, crazy children and talking about their day, making sure they brush their teeth, so all the tension from our day is tabled... until the next.

Equality. Absolutely. That's what defines us. It's what makes us great. If it doesn't sit well with your religion, let your God sort it out in the end, but that's us. We're equal.

I always knew I was going somewhere - going out. I just knew. I just knew. I just knew there were a lot more points of view out there.

When I first got out to Hollywood, they were pushing me for sitcoms, and I didn't really have an interest in them. I wanted to do films and slowly worked that way. And then it became, I guess, this curse of the leading man.

I grew up in Oklahoma and Missouri, and I just loved film. My folks would take us to the drive-in on summer nights, and we'd sit on the hood of the car. I just had this profound love for storytelling.

Given a chance, I would like to work with Aishwarya Rai Bachchan because she's a versatile actor.

It's a violent world we live in. I don't agree with trying to hide that or cover it up.

Perhaps we don't need these religious concoctions to pillow the fear of death. Just the fact that there is an unknown, and something greater, can bring a feeling of peace. That's enough for me.

I'd say that 'Tree of Life' is not a Christian so much as a spiritual film.

Success is a beast. And it actually puts the emphasis on the wrong thing. You get away with more instead of looking within.

The best moments can't be preconceived. I've spent a lot of time in editing rooms, and a scene can be technically perfect, with perfect delivery and facial expression and timing, and you remember all your lines, and it is dead.

Man, when I'm riding with the helmet on, I'm invisible. And people just deal with me as the guy on the bike... it gives you a chance to read 'em.

America is a country founded on guns. It's in our DNA. It's very strange but I feel better having a gun. I really do. I don't feel safe, I don't feel the house is completely safe, if I don't have one hidden somewhere. That's my thinking, right or wrong.

You hear stories of intense actors who can't shed their character and who don't know who they are for a week or two after. I'm not that guy, man.

There are no Hallmark cards that define the next chapter, or the value of a history together.

Happiness is overrated. There has to be conflict in life.

I don't think I was all that late in becoming a father.

I'm sure they're saddened by me, and I get frustrated with them. But I love them, and at the end of the day if they need me or if they need anything, I'm there for them. Family.

I look and there's our boy from Vietnam and our daughter from Ethiopia, and our girl was born in Namibia, and our son is from Cambodia, and they're brothers and sisters, man. They're brothers and sisters and it's a sight for elation.

I think someone's conversation, whether in e-mail or in person, should be private.

I guess I just don't see America as separate from Vietnam or Ethiopia. This mentality of 'our team's better than yours' - it's a high school idea. My kids don't see those dividing lines, and I don't want to either.

I phoned my grandparents and my grandfather said 'We saw your movie.' 'Which one?' I said. He shouted 'Betty, what was the name of that movie I didn't like?

I loved 'Saturday Night Fever' when I was a kid. I couldn't believe people talked that way. It was just a whole new culture I didn't understand. I snuck into it. It was an R-rated film. So it holds a special place.

If I'm gonna spend however long it takes to make a movie, give up 14 hours a day for however many weeks or months, then it's very important for me to know that I'm working with people who I respect and enjoy and that we're going for something together.

I think L.A. is impossible. There's just too much media focus. You can't live a normal life.

I'm one of those people you hate because of genetics. It is the truth.

My father came from a very poor background, but I was very fortunate in the sense that we were never in need. My dad was determined to make sure that we didn't want for things. He wanted to give us more opportunity than he had, a better shot at a better life.

A family is a risky venture, because the greater the love, the greater the loss... That's the trade-off. But I'll take it all.

I'm satisfied with making true choices and finding the woman I love, Angie, and building a family that I love so much.

With sons and fathers theres an inexplicable connection and imprint that your father leaves on you.

I always liked film as a teaching tool - a way of getting exposed to ideas that had never been presented to me. It just wasn't on the list of career options where I grew up.

My affliction has been... I can make something or draw something or design something better than I can explain it.

In Missouri, where I come from, we don't talk about what we do - we just do it. If we talk about it, it's seen as bragging.

When I was a boy, I would ask about my family history, about my bloodlines. We really didn't know that much. We had a little Indian in us from the Oklahoma Trail of Tears.

It is each American's constitutional right to marry the person they love.

I grew up on certain movies, particular movies that said something to me as a kid from Missouri, movies that showed me places I'd yet traveled, or different cultures, or explained something, or said something in a better way than I could ever say. I wanted to find the movies like that.

I get enraged when people start telling other people how to live their lives.

'The Assassination of Jesse James' remains one of my favorite films that I've done. You know, it's still labeled a loser.

With sons and fathers, there's an inexplicable connection and imprint that your father leaves on you.

If I'm going to work, I want to work with my wife.

Indian cinema seems to be growing very well at its own pace.

I would love to work in a Bollywood film as there is so much drama and colour in the films there.

You must lose everything in order to gain anything.

I'm actually very snobbish about directors. I have to say 'no' all the time. 'No' is the most powerful word in our business. You've got to protect yourself.

In some ways, I'm still a kid from Missouri and Oklahoma, and I'm trying to find my way.

I always thought that if I wanted to do a family, I wanted to do it big. I wanted there to be chaos in the house.

How many stories have you read that aren't true, stories about me and Angie being married or fighting or splitting up? And when we don't split up, there's a whole new round that we've made up and we're back together again!

I've always been at war with myself, for right or wrong.

Gay marriage is inevitable. The next generation they get it. It is just a matter of time before it becomes a reality.

I have this fantasy of my older days, painting or sculpting or making things. I have this fantasy of a bike trip to Chile. I have this fantasy of flying into Morocco. But right now, it's about getting the work done and getting home to family. I have an adventure every morning, getting up.

I'm one of those people you hate because of genetics. It's the truth.

My kids are just waiting for me at home. I'm their father. They're wondering, 'When's Daddy coming home?'

It's a lovely experience walking around a museum by yourself.

When I received my first paycheck from my now known day job, I spent it on a period Craftsman chair and a Frank Lloyd Wright-wannabe lamp. With my second paycheck, I bought a stereo.

I'm most comfortable with the Southern dialects, really. It's easy, for example, for me to do Irish because we've got Irish heritage where I come from.

I feel like I have to share whatever I can. You're culpable if you don't act.

Deregulation created this epidemic of greed which according to the rules of capitalism was OK. Beyond that there was criminal behaviour. There have been no repercussions and it's hard to make your peace with.

Gay marriage is inevitable. The next generation, they get it. It is just a matter of time before it becomes a reality.

I don't feel restless, I just like to travel.

When I first moved to L.A., I discovered Roy London. I didn't know anything about the arts, the profession; I had no technique, I knew nothing, I'm fresh from Missouri. I sat in on a few classes, and they just felt a little guru-ish and just didn't feel right to me. Until I met Roy.

It took me a good decade of hiding in my house and not going outside to even, like, get my arms around this idea of celebrity, where suddenly people are looking for you to pick your nose or get a shot of you kissing some woman. It's a very discombobulating thing.

I know when I go outside, there'll be a van or two and they'll probably follow us four out of seven days a week, trying to get something. But I'm just going across town and I know they're just wasting their day, so it doesn't bother me anymore.

It's hard to be surprised by a film. It's hard to be surprised by another actor or by a director when you've seen enough and been around. So when I am, or when I forget that I'm watching someone's movie, or when I don't know how someone made a certain turn that I didn't expect . . . You know, I'm in.

I'm drawn to furniture design as complete architecture on a minor scale.

Actions speak louder than words, and it's no more true than with your kids.

My life has been about big changes.

Fame is a bitch, man.

By nature, I keep moving, man. My theory is, be the shark. You've just got to keep moving. You can't stop.

I oscillate between agnosticism and atheism.

I've been no stranger to change.

When I was a little kid we moved to Tulsa, then to St. Louis and, by the time I was in kindergarten, we lived in Springfield, Missouri. There I basically grew up.

Certainly the attrition rate of Hollywood couples looms large.

To leave home, it's got to be worth leaving.

I was very curious about the world even at a young age, and I don't know at what point I became aware that other cultures believed in different religions, and my question was, 'Well, why don't they get to go to Heaven then?'

I find all of my performances come down to mathematics in a sense - how do you approach the problem of this character? Sometimes I crack that problem, sometimes I don't.

I'm much more experienced now, so I can find films that are interesting quicker and cut out the films that don't really matter. It means more to me now because my kids are going to see them, and I want them to be proud.

I was so intent on trying to find a movie about an interesting life, but I wasn't living an interesting life myself.

One of the greatest, smartest things I ever did was give my kids Angie as their mom. She is such a great mom. Oh, man, I'm so happy to have her.

Plan B is really a little garage band of three people, and our mandate has been to help get difficult material, that might not otherwise get made, to the screen and to work with directors we respect.

Once you get older, you get a little closer to yourself, intimate.

I grew up very religious, and I don't have a great relationship with religion.

I believe you make your day. You make your life. So much of it is all perception, and this is the form that I built for myself. I have to accept it and work within those compounds, and it's up to me.

We're so complex; we're mysteries to ourselves; we're difficult to each other. And then storytelling reminds us we're all the same.

It's those difficult times that inform the next wonderful time, and it's a series of trade-offs, of events, of wins and losses.

I just don't like the separatism that comes from religion, and, without fail, the need to put your beliefs on someone else. When you start telling someone else how to live, you should check yourself, man.

I'm 48 now and whatever I get music-wise, I get from my kids and that's it. I don't think I'll ever be hip again!

I have very few friends. I have a handful of close friends, and I have my family, and I haven't known life to be any happier.

I've never seen a publicist that could protect me from things, protect anyone from what's going on out there.

What's valuable to me has become clearer as I've got older. To me, it's about the value of your time and your day and the value of the people you spend it with.

I spent the '90s trying to hide out, trying to duck the full celebrity cacophony.

My happiest moment is the day they call wrap and I'm free. I'm not looking back.

When I first started, they were trying to get me into sitcoms - I think because I had that kind of Wonder Bread look and my hair always went into place. I kept saying, 'I'm not good at sitcoms. I don't know how to do that.'

Heartthrobs are a dime a dozen.

I had a friend who worked at a hospice, and he said people in their final moments don't discuss their successes, awards or what books they wrote or what they accomplished. They only talk about their loves and their regrets, and I think that's very telling.

My training is documented on film.

I have a hard time with morals. All I know is what feels right, what's more important to me is being honest about who you are. Morals I get a little hung up on.

You want to stake your own claim. You don't want to be called a copycat.