We don't need to eat anyone who would run, swim, or fly away if he could.

But if you really want to learn about life, get a cat. The way I think people should relate to animals is with a cat. Because the world is his.

Pets are humanizing. They remind us we have an obligation and responsibility to preserve and nurture and care for all life.

The attitude we have towards our personal pets as opposed to the animals that suffer under the factory farm is hypocritical and delusional.

We don't need to eat anyone who would run, swim, or fly away if he could.

'Barney Miller' was a lot of fun. I'm very fond of Abe Vigoda. Most - a lot of people on that cast - I really liked.

'Jamie' is what my mother gave me, and that takes the onus off of being big. Somebody thinks, 'Oh, Jamie - how threatening can he be?'

All of them - my father, mother, step-mother, and grandmother - were all wonderful actors and performers and they are an inspiration to me, both in their craft and in their humanity.

Anybody can call me Jamie, and you have to watch it when you call me James. Then there's going to be a problem.

During the run up to the Iraq War, Mike Farrell and I did get on television kind of frequently, but then they saw that that didn't work. They really couldn't bait us into being stupid, so they stopped. You know the mainstream media, corporate media, avoids ever giving anyone who has anything to say a platform, if they can possibly help it.

I auditioned for 'Revenge Of The Nerds,' and I so did not want the picture. I didn't want it. I didn't want be in anything that had nerds anywhere.

I don't know how many parts I've lost because a lot of the politics in California are very conservative, and I'm fairly outspoken. I always tried to get as much politics in as I could, because I do believe in class struggle, and I think that's what's left out.

I don't study films particularly. I plan to direct, but I'm not watching film - I watch the entire film to see how the story goes, but I don't say, 'Oh, so he does a slow pan here, or he pulls here, watch the crane shot, or look at the composition,' because it's got to be my eye.

I have a film called 'A Lonely Place For Dying,' which is the most watched film on the Internet, over 3 million hits, more than any of Hollywood's films.

I play an 89-year-old man whose wife has Alzheimer's in a movie called 'Still.' I play a World War II veteran, I acted with my son and it's called 'Memorial Day.'

I say a lot of things I shouldn't say.

I started in theatre. I was at Cleveland and I went to London for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth.

I think the relationship of indigenous people to their environment... that those were ethical omnivores.

I was told by my agent that a number of big stars won't work with anyone two inches taller than them and most of them are under six feet, so you have to be prepared to have trouble.

I'm an animal rights activist because I believe we won't have a planet if we continue to behave toward other species the way we do.

My first films were comedy, 'Murder By Death,' and 'The Cheap Detective.' But now they won't think of me as a comedian. Now, they think of me as a bad guy, and I can't do comedy.

Often we're recreating what we think we're supposed to be as human beings. What we've been told we're supposed to be, instead of who we authentically are. The key about the creation of full self-expression is to be authentically who you are, to project that.

The Academy Awards were basically created by the industry to promote pictures. They weren't really to acknowledge the performances. Then it became sort of this a great popularity contest and now, it's an incredible show and it's seen all over the world.

There is something intrinsically, systemically wrong with white, western culture, and if we don't fix it, it won't continue.

Until men learn to celebrate and operate on the feminine aspect of themselves and stop the oppression of women, children, the environment, other species, we don't have a world to live in. It's not a world that anyone chooses to live in.

What is magnificent about humans is when they decide to turn and stand. If they respond with non-violence on principle and hold their ground, they are really magnificent.

You don't just one day say, 'That's it, I'm doing this, I'm going to throw all my shoes out and I'm not eating honey and I won't drive my car because there are animal bones in the tires...' because you'd drive yourself around the bend.

The World's Fair was the precursor to theme parks like Disneyworld, and the really sort of cheap, superficial promotional architecture that you see everywhere in the U.S. I think there's a danger when you start creating a civilisation that isn't meant to last.

The degree that these scenes went to... there was a couple of days I was upset... I'd have to hurry back to the girls in the makeup trailer and have a bit of a cry because it messes with your head.

I'm half living my life between reality and fantasy at all times.

A celebrity is a person who works hard all of their life to become well known and then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.

People with high blood pressure, diabetes - those are conditions brought about by life style. If you change the life style, those conditions will leave.

Liberal Christianity, of course, has enemies, but they are everyone's enemies - sexism, racism, homophobia. But liberal versions of Christianity, which can be both theologically and politically conservative, assume that what it means to be Christian qua Christian is to have no enemies peculiar to being Christian.

My teacher Tom Spanbauer, the man who got me started writing in his workshop, used to say: 'Writers write because they weren't invited to a party.' That always struck so true, and people always nod their heads when they hear that. Especially writers.

You want to win the games, to win trophies.

Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better do better.

A wise woman never yields by appointment. It should always be an unforeseen happiness.

Freedom begins as we become conscious of it.

I am a happy person and I choose to be a positive person. I think some people think my life has been tragic and there have been these horrible dramas but things really have been, and are, fine.

Marriage fascinates me: how we negotiate its span, how we change within it, how it changes itself, and why some relationships survive and others do not. There isn't a single marriage that couldn't provide enough narrative arc for a novel.

When people are bored it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored.

Sometimes, I have themes that interest me or that touch on larger issues but, really, I'm just trying to figure out the plot, or how the characters work. I'm trying to make the best story I possibly can.

Affection makes your spirit slither out from its concealing spot.

I think we really feel like Crowdrise could be something that, 20 years from now, people take for granted because that's just how you do it, like if you're going to raise money for something, that's how you do it.

Isn't that what writing is about? The constant attempt to understand the world?

So I moved to Europe and only came back when directors like Robert Altman would call me after they'd seen my work in Full Metal Jacket.

I would advise you to write, my dear friend, because with your active nature, solitude is simply intolerable to you, and after some time your solitude would become perhaps attractive if you were to people it with creatures of your own fancy.

Yes, I receive fan mail. One of my favorite things to do is sit down and read the letters people write. It's really amazing the time people take to write these letters, tell their stories, draw pictures, etc.

I'm kind of a nervous guy. I know on television I look like I'm half asleep, but inside I'm going about 100 miles an hour.