It was a lot of auditions and tapings and stuff like that.

The Professional Children's School, it's for professional kids, so if you wanted to ditch, you could just write, Audition on a note and leave. I didn't really like school all that much.

Watching a good actor is the best way to learn.

I shut up and keep my ears and eyes open.

A week before shooting, they told me, You don't have the part, yet. We're still trying to find a handicapped kid who can act. Either that or we break your legs.

I think people are going to keep asking me about Macaulay. Some things change and some things don't.

The whole family is tight. We all really love each other.

The divorce was rough on all of us. I don't blame Hollywood for my family's problems. But having all of it reported in the press made it more of an ordeal.

They put me in a whole body suit, from my neck to my ankles. It was so bad, I couldn't straighten my legs.

I feel different than I did three years ago, in The Cider House Rules.

I don't know how long I'll be trick or treating. Maybe I'll be 80 years old and still trick or treating.

I liked a lot of the scenes I did with Ryan Phillippe.

I see Igby as my first movie as an adult, and it's a big deal for me because I really, really like the film.

Igby was a really good opportunity for me to grow up. The cast was great.

It was a lot of auditions and tapings and stuff like that.

When I worked on Altar Boys, they wanted to see us having fun. The four of us would have fun on set and steal each other's lines, and mess with the director.

With any kind of artistic thing, it's a muscle, like any athlete, and the moment you're not doing it, you lose all confidence. That's why I'm terrible with down time.

I lived for nearly seven years with the awareness that death was my everyday companion.

Then, when I was a senior in high school, I was kind of bereft and she put me in an acting class.

The worst cliques are those which consist of one man.

I'll tell you, Quentin Tarantino really writes the most amazing dialogue.

The Tea Party is simply a loose description of local activism driven by Americans who want smaller government and more self-reliance. That sounds like what the Founding Fathers had in mind, does it not?

A notorious network of violent Islamist hoodlums, concentrated in the rough-and-tumble district of Molenbeek in Brussels, has been operating in plain sight since the 1990s, planning, plotting and carrying out dozens of elaborate jihadi missions from Afghanistan to Algeria.

The only time I'm miserable is when I can't keep an instrument in tune.

Birth is violent, and out of that violence is our only chance of rebirth.

I've had to relearn how I work with people so that if and when I do avoid different things I don't send any messages in doing so.

So I'm trying to spread myself to the point to where I can do the night shows and not have to worry about the matinees, and do one or two matinees down through the year.

I don't get high, but sometimes I wish I did. That way, when I messed up in life I would have an excuse. But right now there's no rehab for stupidity.

Your successful past will block your visions of the future.

Lord, when the song wants to pick up and go a little faster towards the end, it's hard for me to resist.

Preemption is the right of any nation in order to preserve its National Security; however, preemptive war is a tactic, not a strategy. When used as a strategy preemption dilutes diplomacy, creates an atmosphere of distrust, and promotes regional instability.

Monday is great if I can spend it in bed. I'm a man of simple pleasures, really.

The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire.

What lists and awards don't measure - and I feel this strongly - is the lasting value of any work of art. They're a snapshot of a moment, and one should always consider their judgments in that context.

The only compensation, gained through the influence of nongovernmental organizations, consisted in slightly broadening for private individuals the possibility of access and appeal to the agencies enforcing the Covenant concerned with civil and political rights.

Fight as hard as you can, and then understand there's going to have to be some amount of reasonable compromise.

Good well-being leads to good working performance.

Being a sex symbol was rather like being a convict.

I was heavily influenced by big voices when I was younger. People like Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, and Patti Labelle really spoke to me. When I got older, I was into Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, and Lauryn Hill, but it wasn't until I started working with a voice coach that I really dove into jazz music.

I've been interested in the idea of forgiveness and the necessity of it. I think of it as the most critical piece of any relationship, whether that be business, or romantic, or familial. We fail each other. We make mistakes. If we contract to go on after those mistakes, forgiveness is involved. Forgiveness is required.