In many ways I wish I wasn't an actor dragging around the baggage from being one so that I could just devote my energies to encouraging people to find their true selves.

From dear, dear Gloria Swanson, I learned how to live long, happy and free of health problems. I owe her my life.

Hollywood today is all about being consistent. All thinking in mainstream film business takes place in one box.

Life: my favorite occupation.

Generally speaking, actors are allowed NO input. Actors are dumb.

In many ways I wish I wasn't an actor dragging around the baggage from being one so that I could just devote my energies to encouraging people to find their true selves.

I write from my imagination, not from what I've read in books or seen on TV or to make money. I wrote from an idea I was passionate about.

I am very willing to share whatever I know or feel I know about finding some serenity in this lifetime.

A stage play requires very different craft from a book, fiction or otherwise, and ditto from a screenplay.

Be very clear as to what your dream is. Nowadays it is fairly certain that 90 percent of all actors really just want to be rich and famous as the solution to all that ails.

I'm a classic example of what can happen if you follow your inner voice. I was cursed with interests and some talent in many different areas. It confuses people.

When I was a young actor... the more different you were from the part you played, the more talent it reflected.

The best things in life are usually difficult.

Films must all have the same structure. All of this to guarantee box office bonanza, which of course it never does, but that's another discussion entirely.

Children... are our legacy. Our responsibility. They are our destiny and we are theirs. The extent to which we fail as parents, we fail as God's children.

If you want to have great success, you'd better give them what they want, but so be it.

Hollywood... a city I was to come back to time and again, in sickness and in health, in success and in failure, with anticipation and with dread.

It helps to be able to be alone. 'Cuz writing is done alone, unless you collaborate, but I don't do that. Ask my ex-wife.

You can't leave civilization behind entirely.

My favorite thing is to be alone in a room with a blank paper in front of me and the time to fill it.

Harrison Ford was pretty content as a carpenter who thought it would be nice to work on TV and ended up being the biggest film star in the history of cinema.

The space genre is timeless.

It is all about marketing; that is where the real craft comes in. The best actors do not necessarily become the biggest stars. And vice versa.

I can still fit into my Battlestar Galactica costume!

Time is money, as they say, and it was never more apropos than on a television show, where a minute is worth about $200!

I have written two nonfiction books, I'm embarrassed to say.

It is a good motive, fame and money, as it is tangible and measurable. Being an artist is neither measurable nor tangible and certainly not a way to become rich.

There is a divine moment in our lives when we all become one. It's called procreation, and it is reborn, continually and forever.

Anybody can write a film script 'cuz it has been reduced to a formula.

We are all vegetarians here, and except for a mountain lion that's been hanging around and killed our dog, we don't have a care in the world.

The only difference from one $100 million budget film to another is which of the 12 box stars are getting $20 million to be in it.

Movies are movies, television is television.

I write from the same place I parent, and since becoming a single parent, I have found it difficult, if not impossible, to write anything of length.

Life has never been easy. Nor is it meant to be. It is a matter of being joyous in the face of sorrow.

I believe that the first 8 years are most important and the time in a child's life when parents must be absolutely and completely present.

From Fred Astaire I learned discipline and hard work.

To me, all writing is like music. And especially dialogue. I studied music in college; that is what I wanted to be, a composer. Acting got me sidetracked.

I wanted to be Anthony Hopkins and ended up being neither a film star nor having a career on the stage.

I never get involved with the ladies I work with.

Change is good. And in fact unavoidable.

I am very abnormal... But it wasn't very long ago that I wasn't so abnormal. I was very normal and headed for a lifetime of paying medical bills as proof of my normalcy.

I'm the worst person to ask about how to get noticed. It took me 25 years.

If we wait until our lives are free from sorrow or difficulty, then we wait forever. And miss the entire point.

Children who cling to parents or who don't want to leave home are stunted in their emotional, psychological growth.

America is terrified of the passage of time. Prozac Nation. Land of Face Lifts.

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.