Most actors spend a lot of time training themselves to be an actor. And I kind of didn't do that. I just started doin' it in front of an audience and had to deliver.

It was pretty extensive - we worked out 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 3 months, which I think is more than anybody in the Olympics. I thought well I don't need this, the girls need it, but it was a gift.

I'm not regretful about dropping acid, but I could have stopped it a little sooner.

I was involved in a web cartoon of Kung Fu with WB a few years back.

Quentin and I were constantly finding something new that we had in common and comic books were one of them. I think we were talking about comic books much earlier in our relationship, before I had the part.

Most actors spend a lot of time training themselves to be an actor. And I kind of didn't do that. I just started doin' it in front of an audience and had to deliver.

My big fight is not in the movie and I don't understand that decision but I know he's right about it, whatever it is. Quentin did not hire me because I'm a kung fu expert; he hired me because he liked to listen to me talk.

Because you know how you say I've got to really get down and really do some training and then of course, you never do or you do it for a couple of weeks and slough it back off again but I'm being forced to do something that I really want to do and I loved it.

Quentin wanted to create this special world in which everybody walks around with a samurai sword, extras in the airport, a special little place in the airplane to stick your samurai sword.

I remember when I did the pilot, and I though no network is going to want to do this. How could that happen? A half Chinese guy walking the old west that doesn't fire one gun and never gets on a horse?

Quentin is very organic; there was no way that he was going to put someone else's hand in there and anyway, my hands are kind of famous. It seemed right.

Tarantino is the coolest damn guy; he's just so much fun to work with. He might be the best director I've ever worked with. He just seems to know how to do it and he knows how to make you feel good about it. He's having so much fun you start having fun. You can't help it.

If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.

'Born to play? Hmmm. Probably Romeo... or Hamlet, I guess. Also, I'd be a great Alexander the Great.

Why would you be afraid of death? It would be an inconvenience. I have a lot of undone things and it's bound to get in the way. But, no, it doesn't scare me at all.

But, Tarantino has seen all of my movies. He's seen my good stuff, he's seen my bad stuff, he's seen the ones I directed, he's read my autobiography. There's an awful lot of things he knows about me, all of which I think had something to do with his casting.

I've worked with a lot of real heavy hitters, and Quentin is maybe heads and shoulders, at least a forehead, above just about anybody I've ever worked with.

I like Bill a lot. As Bill is presented, I mean you don't ever see Bill blow her head off? You know? And I think what Quentin has done is he created a monster.

Well I would never say to anybody that Warren Beatty got fired, but uh, I think he and Quentin fell out of love, and I think Warren told Quentin to hire me for the film.

I don't need to convince anybody that I know kung fu, but maybe somebody needs to know that I really can act, without doing a Chinese accent or a funny walk.

In the second installment, I pretty much dominate the show. Somehow or another, though, I manage to apparently dominate the first show pretty well with just my voice and my hands and a shot of my boots kicking cartridges out of the way.

You know, I've never actually really believed that death is inevitable. I just think it's a rumor.

There's an alternative. There's always a third way, and it's not a combination of the other two ways. It's a different way.

I studied music formally. I was probably less formal about my study of acting than anything.

I'm analytical as an actor, and one of the things Quentin did was free me from that.

Most actors spend a lot of time training themselves to be an actor. And I kind of didn't do that.

There are wonderful films that become studio films, but they're conceived independently. That's where the action is. 'Being John Malkovich' is a great example of a picture you wouldn't think the studios would want, and it turns out to be a movie that touches everybody's heart.

There's tons of members of the Carradine family. It's more like a clan than it is like a family, and it's rare that we can get a bunch of them together. We do once in a while.

My favorite actor is Wallace Beery.

I've been a very lucky actor.

I don't think I could be happy as an actor if there was a tyrant on the set.

When I was starting to get noticed as an actor in the 1970s for something other than the third cowboy on the right who ended up dying in every movie or episode, Burt Reynolds was the biggest star in the world.

Most parts that can be played by one actor can equally well be played by another, but not this.

I think, frankly, that I'm a better director than I was an actor.

I knew an actor's career goes up and down and back up again. Your standing in this business can't be your whole identity; otherwise, you're doomed.

I don't think any actor feels comfortable watching themselves in movies. You must be very narcissistic. The problem with your own opinion of yourself is that contrary to the normal spectators, when you watch a film you are in, you only watch yourself.

I don't think there has been any increase in sophistication in the audience. When people are aware of a concept that's easy to understand, and there's an actor who will attract them to the theater and it's a movie that's funny three-quarters of the time, it will be successful.

I never dreamed about being an actor, because that was out of reach. Coming from a small town that was big in farming, and also big in clothing factories, you don't dream about being a professional football player or an actor.

My goal was always to be recognized as a good actor but no one was interested in that, simply because society just wants to warm towards your appearance. This is the great blemish of society.

If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable.

To be honest with you, when I got into this I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

It was very natural for me to want to disappear into dark theater, I am really very shy. That is something that people never seem to fully grasp because, when you are an actor, you are meant to be an exhibitionist.

I think that I've still not been successful at playing the role of the retired actor, and I'd like to work on that.

And once you cease to be a real person, you stop being a good actor.

When I decided I wanted to be an actor, I said I wanted to work with quality actors and directors.

There are roles I want that my agency might not want me to do because of the subject matter or whatever. Or there are roles that people won't bring to me because they don't think I'll do it. And that is a big strain because an actor wants to act.

Reality is, I'm an actor and an entertainer, and I really wouldn't know what to do with another profession.

I still feel like I'm trying to make it. It's hard to shed the struggling actor thing.

Only a great actor finds the difficulties of the actor's art infinite.