With Dick Smith there, and the words of Peter Shaffer... they've got to be the most beautiful descriptions in music ever written on film or in literature. And we could hear the music accompanying the words... What more can you ask for?

I'm not going to just say nice things about everybody unless I mean it.

If these men decided that they have to go in there and fight, I want them to send their own children and grandchildren. I want them to not send a bunch of strangers' kids in there to fight and die.

As much preparation as I had made for the old man Salieri, gestures and so on, the fact is after sitting for hours, your movements are kind of slow.

I have two brothers buried in the military cemetery in Texas. I don't want to see any more of that.

People desire power. I don't know why they want it so. It seems to me it implies a hugely superior intellect which separates them from most of the populace.

I just throw it out and see what happens. If it sounds and feels right, then I continue.

With Dick Smith there, and the words of Peter Shaffer... they've got to be the most beautiful descriptions in music ever written on film or in literature. And we could hear the music accompanying the words... What more can you ask for?

I really like to experiment. That's the only way I can work. It's instinctive.

The difficulty is capturing surprise on film.

There are certain men and women who, from the minute they step in front of a camera, that's exactly where they belong. Connery's one.

I'd like President Bush to get a gun in his hands. I'll go with him. I can't think of anything better than to die in place 's just beginning their lives.

I don't want to talk in terms of miracles. I think this is a very serious situation. But I do want to talk in terms of Bush becoming a man of the hour, and I think this is way to do it.

Once I looked into a mirror at my face I felt like it was completely convincing. I was Salieri.

Suddenly I was the man who got the part that every actor in the English language was trying to get. I was really scared. I had talked the talk, and now I had to walk the walk. For three days, I couldn't answer the phone.

I acted my heart out.

Woody Allen sets are very quiet. Extraordinary sense of power from a man who doesn't do anything except just stand there.

There is one confrontation scene toward the end of the picture. In the middle of the scene, I thought, That's Sean Connery! I don't know how else to describe Sean Connery. I still feel that way.

I think creativity is spiritual. I absolutely believe that.

I'm just having a wonderful time. It's an interesting thing that I'm very comfortable with this material and I don't know why. Maybe it's because I did MacBeth.

The idea that you can make love and not war really is pretty neat. That thing in Korea, the thing in Israel - that's all over the world. There must be a new way of thinking.

Whenever there were parties, I wasn't invited because I began to be like that character. In a way, that contributed to the success of the performance.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, I don't know if you'd call him a great actor, but he's amazing in terms of his presence, and he is interesting enough that you want to watch him.

I'm a very proud actor.

Milos said, You're my first choice. From my point of view, that doesn't pay the rent. I said, Tell me what I have to do next because I'm busy painting my kitchen.

All the stuff that you visualized that was going to work so beautifully, you discover is trashed, so you jump to something else.

I trust that the president will try, just give it one more shot, some revolutionary way of not doing this, of bringing all those kids back home safely.

With Connery, he does act. He is in complete command. He completely trusts the person first, then the instrument. I've worked with his son also, on a picture in Russia.

I love parties. I love a good time.

I'd like President Bush to think maybe there's another way to think, that maybe Kissinger was wrong when he says we had to go in there because he was wrong about Vietnam.

My best film composing experience was with Elia Kazan.

I was lucky enough to occasionally break out of that racist situation that prevails in the Hollywood film production community. But it was racist then and it will always be that way. It will never be otherwise.

'Batman' took 10 months to film, and by the time I stopped working on it, it took a long time before my English accent came out again. I was actually having to try for it.

Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.

I still feel that a movie has to attempt to say something - even if it fails miserably. But I've sort of given up on believing that I'm going to change the world with every film I choose to act in.

It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character.

To make a documentary is one thing, to make a feature film is quite another.

I mean when the play was on in New York I was starting to get film offers coming through, and since the film's come out I get offered more than I used to, but it happens incrementally.

I think it would be very boring dramatically to have a film where everybody was a lawyer or doctor and had no faults. To me, the most important thing is to be truthful.

I like doing them and they're ridiculous and the actors can improvise a lot, and they don't have to be really realistic characters that hit a very specific tone as in a feature film. They're really fun, I want to make more of them definitely.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film project was collaborating with so many people - directors, filmmakers, and writers - over a five-year period. I learned that there are two components to this.

The best thing I can think of would be to create a union between something as beautiful and powerful and wonderful as Hollywood films and a criticism of the status quo. That's my dream, to make such a German film.

If he didn't fall in love he would have never come back near the end of the film. Because, what man is going to dishonor himself so that he comes back in front of the man that took a woman away from him... and warns her to save her life?

Robert Altman's Nashville is my all-time favorite film because it covers all the bases - it's original, moving, and has something to say, but also funny and incredibly entertaining.

I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm such an internal novelist.

I have a movie coming out called Spun, which will be at the Toronto Film Fest.

Well ironically my last three roles have all been a mother. One was a Canadian film where the baby was taken away because she is a drug addict, in Irish Jam I play a mother to a four year old. I think in the future I'll be able to handle the role with a lot more depth.

And when you see it the first time you put the film together, the roughest cut, is when you want to go home and open up your veins and get in a warm tub and just go away. And then it gradually, maybe, works its way back, somewhere toward that spot you were at before.

A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.