I spend a lot of my time trying to draw the attention of actors to the minute and subtle details of human behavior, which was the sort of thing I was looking at when I was a neurologist.

Now, that is in a way also what scientists are trying to do they're trying to get people to see that the world can be represented in an alternative way and that it's right.

Someone like Einstein was quite clearly a moralist, and he had a very highly developed political vision and was very spiritual in his way, and there are many biologists and physicists of the first order who are like that.

I'm not against asking the audience to work, but I think what you have now is a sort of gratuitous deconstruction as a result of a fashion of literary deconstructionism indicating that there are no meanings.

Being a doctor has taught me a lot about directing. You're doing the same thing: You're reconstructing the manifold of behavior to the point where an audience says, yes, that's exactly like people I know.

The thing about science is that it's an accurate picture of the world.

Science is a self-sufficient activity.

People can't draw now and don't feel it's necessary. Art students don't seem to want to draw.

It's not that Shakespeare is frivolous, but you spend your time just getting people to dress up in other people's costumes and pretending to be people that they're not, and you think, after the years go by, well, what on earth was all that about?

You spend ten years of your life being trained to do one thing, and you're being taught to think that it's the most serious thing that anyone could possibly do, and then suddenly you find yourself doing something that in some respects is the epitome of frivolity.

What I should have been, you see, is a neurologist.

Argumentative exhibitions bring issues to life in a way that very much irritates traditional curators who want to see their pictures valued for themselves.

What people want is not what some would call imaginative and often austere productions but very lavish productions which cast back into the auditorium an image of their affluence.

As we know from the work of certain fundamental physicists, people like Einstein were very dependent upon conjuring up visual images in order to imagine things which otherwise were not easily formulated.

A lot of high-level scientists are in fact people of almost universal interest.

The burden of the past is only, I think, oppressive when you've got to go on the experience of the avant garde.

I was trained as a neurologist, and then I went into the theater, and if you're brought up to think of yourself as a biological scientist of some sort, pretty well everything else seems frivolous by comparison.

I spend a lot of my time trying to draw the attention of actors to the minute and subtle details of human behavior, which was the sort of thing I was looking at when I was a neurologist.

What makes literature interesting is that it does not survive its translation. The characters in a novel are made out of the sentences. That's what their substance is.

People are already self-selected by the time they've decided to become scientists.

I wasn't driven into medicine by a social conscience but by rampant curiosity.

I'm not really a Jew; just Jew-ish, not the whole hog.

Errors of taste are very often the outward sign of a deep fault of sensibility.

I became startled by the extraordinary difference between something whose surface is completely invisible which only makes itself present by virtue of what it reflects, and a window, which doesn't make itself apparent at all, in the ideal case.

Actors love mental disorders, dialects, and corsets. Give them one of the three and they're happy.

What's fascinating is that when you write a script, it's almost a stream of consciousness. You have an idea that it means something, but you're not always sure what. Then when you get on the set, the actors teach you.

Young actors often don't think of the consequences of doing nudity or sex scenes. They want the role so badly that they agree to be exploited, and then end up embarrassing family, friends, and even strangers.

I've seen many actors go awry by making the wrong choices early on.

Actors are able to trick themselves into treating anything as if it's fantastic. It's a kind of madness really.

David Cronenberg knows what we actors do as artists.

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.

I'm not in the business of becoming famous. And that's the advice I give to younger aspiring actors. Work onstage and do the little roles. In the end it's not important to be seen. It's important to do. There's a lot of disappointment in this business, but my family keeps me grounded.

Actors get pigeonholed very quickly, particularly movie actors. In the theater, one is more used to casting people against type and trusting that their talent and skill will get them through.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

I was very pleased you know, and I was afraid that I might stick out, but I didn't. My happiest thing about that picture is that I proved that American actors can speak as well and also fit in with an ensemble like that.

I've worked with a lot of really fine actors, both on stage and on screen. The level of their game lifts me up and brings the level of my game up to theirs. Always. It's like a constant upgrade.

I feel like I'm the most well-adjusted character on the show, even though I'm sure the other actors would tell you the same thing about their characters.

There's a constant flow of child actors. It's kind of funny to watch the new crew come through. I think, You poor little things. You're going to have to struggle for a long time.

I'll miss the relationships I have built with these actors. I'll miss the devotion we have to this work. Over this length of time, the tendency is to think it will never end.

After the war, there was no industry. We lost the war. We had our whole city destroyed. No money. No studio. No film. No camera. No equipment. We would shoot in the street. We had no actors. Nothing. But we wanted to do movies. And we did the best movies in the world.

An actors' tribute to me is in his work.

A few nights ago I went to a Hollywood screening of a small independent film made by Sally Kirkland, an old friend of mine who also did terrific job acting in it. There were other actors in it and they were all terrific.

This friend of mine said he was surprised to find that - I don't think it's quite a majority - a bigger percentage of actors are introverts than extroverts. It was a big surprise to him. Now, I know me, and I'll do anything if I'm playing a character. Or anything that's true to the character, anyway. But in real life I'm a little more withdrawn.

Plastic surgery and breast implants are fine for people who want that, if it makes them feel better about who they are. But, it makes these people, actors especially, fantasy figures for a fantasy world. Acting is about being real being honest.

When on the set of a film, you have to play natural for entire scenes in a very unnatural environment. You have to express emotions and interact with other actors and also use your voice.

If you watch the show and the characters don't look at each other while they're talking, the actors probably aren't getting along.

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

My favorite actors when I was a kid were in their '60s. Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne.

I think it's hard to know. Feeling fulfilled, because actors face periods of unemployment, there is nothing worse than being at the top of your game; you have so much to give but do not have the platform to do this.