I'm a character actor so I've jumped around to all kinds of things.

When they were small and my wife really had no other responsibilities, except taking care of the family and all of us, it wasn't that big a deal. It was fun. Hey, we're going to Moscow. We're going to Italy. We're going to Toronto. We're going to New York.

But what I will do is I'll acknowledge it and if it can be of any help the fact that I do acknowledge it then maybe other people will benefit from it because I do have somewhat of a public forum being in the line of work I am.

But we're still in somewhat a Puritanical society in a lot of ways.

I reached that day that I always thought might happen, where I say to myself I don't want to do this anymore. I'm looking for some stability. I want to stay home.

I'm a character actor so I've jumped around to all kinds of things.

I wouldn't be surprised if some day, they put the Simpsons in the Smithsonian. It's become part of our culture, those characters.

They put me in the drama class, and that's the path I've taken.

There's now a Fat Tony doll, which cracks me up. But you feel honored that they asked you to do a voice.

I mean, it's the life lessons that I suppose you learn that nobody gets a free ride and that you do the best you can with the means that you can and try to open yourself to as much knowledge and all that that you can.

For every Mother Teresa, there's a Jeffrey Dahmer.

If you're going to believe in a God, then you also have to equally believe that there's a flip side to this.

I've spent the better part of the last twenty-five years doing a lot of traveling.

You learn that not all things fall into a certain kind of pattern that can be predictable and that can be understandable and that's going to be easy, you know.

For the last thirty years in my career I never know what I'm doing next.

You know the way I play golf, it's a good I do these things for charities.

That's why I really don't play cards or gamble. Because I'd crack.

There are a lot of people who will come to me for advice or whatever.

I mean, believe me, I'm not for censorship.

I've loved it, but I have a wife and two children.

Dean Martin is one of my heroes.

There's good and evil going on. We have cops. We have robbers.

You talk to the real cops and they say ninety percent of it is paperwork.

I'm in the wrong racket if I didn't want a public life.

I did plays and movies and whatever all over the place.

When I played Dean Martin, he was dead when we made the movie but there would have been nothing better than to spend a week with Dean Martin if I could have.

If at the end of the day, people look at it and say, oh, yeah, I liked his stuff, or for the most part I liked his stuff, or I've enjoyed watching some of the things he's done, that's all I can hope for.

Whenever you're going to play a real person, you run the risk of well, everybody in the world kind of has an image of what that person is and who he should be and so you really have to do your homework.

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.