Rob Lowe

When I was filming 'The Outsiders,' my idea of success was getting the next Martin Scorsese movie.

I have other obligations now - the show, my family, my life... though I know that without my sobriety I wouldn't have any of those things.

I love acting so much that I don't want to give that up.

Oh my God, I love rehab! I highly recommend it.

For guys, I don't think you're ever ready... I don't think you wake up and go, 'You know, today's the day I'm going to get married. By God, I'm ready. My house is in order, and it is time.'

There is a movie called 'My Dog Skip,' starring my 'Outsiders' costar Diane Lane. I do not recommend it. If you have a child, particularly one about to leave home, watching this film is to be emotionally waterboarded.

I'm a registered Independent.

Let me just say this - sometimes being a trailblazer is highly overrated.

It took being famous to make me cool, which, by the way, I never forgot.

The first shooter video game stuff which - look, admittedly, I missed that generationally, so it's not a thing for me. I've never played them. I don't really get it. My kids do.

I was smart and married somebody who could do for me what I couldn't do for myself.

I look at it like this: that if Shakespeare were alive today, he would have written two or three plays about the Kennedy family, and actors would traditionally play JFK like they Hamlet or King Lear. They just would. I mean, people have played JFK, and they'll play him long after I have.

David Blum burned a lot of bridges. He burned people early in their careers. He took on the wrong people, though. He's not Hunter Thompson or Tom Wolfe, he's David Blum living in a cheap flat.

When I started on 'The West Wing,' that was at a time when this was still a stigma, because movie stars didn't do TV. Now, every movie star is desperate to find their 'True Detective.'

Look, I owns guns.

Matthew Lowe is one of the great water men that I know. He's a surfer, a great water polo player. I think he's half fish.

By making more people aware of lymphoma, Worldwide Lymphoma Awareness Day hopes to save lives by increasing early diagnosis and suitable treatment.

We should all be so lucky in our lives to create things that we're still talking about 25 years later.

The president of the United States can't even fire his chef. I'm not kidding.

Sobriety was the greatest gift I ever gave myself. I don't put it on a platform. I don't campaign about it. It's just something that works for me. It enabled me to really connect with another human being - my wife, Sheryl - which I was never able to do before.

I always wanted that house where everybody wants to go, full of energy, dogs, music, fun.

I'm a political junkie.

After my parents' divorce when I was 4, I spent weekends with my dad before we finally moved to California. By the time Sunday rolled around, I was incapable of enjoying the day's activities, of being in the moment, because I was already dreading the inevitable goodbye of Sunday evening.

I signed up for 'Brothers & Sisters' because I think it's a really great show. I like my character, and I'm really interested in what he has to do every day - and this cast is so spectacular. I really wanted to work with this particular group of people.

I was a child of the '80s.

I don't like being taken for granted anywhere in life. I don't want my vote taken for granted.

I like the way you can circumvent the media gatekeepers and go right to the people. That's my favorite thing about Twitter.

I'm what you would call an 'independent moderate.'

Tom Ford, who is my all-time favourite, once said to me, 'Here's the thing about dress shirts, Rob. You need white, and you need black.' 'What about blue,' I asked. He said, 'Have you ever seen Cary Grant in a blue dress shirt?'

We always reminisce about how everyone tried to get Diane Lane's attention, to very little success.

I had long ago become a creation, a public image made to be consumed, piled on top of a precarious shell of a little boy wanting to be loved.

The Brat Pack is timeless.

Guys are really lucky. We become our authentic selves the older we get.

My roles in comedies from 'Austin Powers' to 'Tommy Boy' to 'Wayne's World,' were sort of comedic 'straight man' parts. My character on 'Parks & Recreation' is the comic relief in a comedy. To play a character that appears strictly for laughs is sort of new for me and really fun.

The first private space of my own wasn't a dorm room; it was a hotel room in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Things that I consider bad qualities, I always try and figure out where they are coming from. I don't consider ambition to be a bad one. It's served me very well in my life. Very well.

I made a conscious effort to focus on television so I could stay in Los Angeles, so I wasn't on a location all over the world doing movies.

I believe in ceremony. I think ceremony is important, pomp and circumstance, tradition. I'm into those things.

I didn't go to Ivy League schools. I dropped out of college to go into movies.

The '90s were a time of building for me. Building a life that was sober, drained of harmful, wasteful excess and manufacturing in its place a family of my own.

Conventions are by nature a party. I mean thats why people become delegates. They come from all over the world to exercise their democratic rights and to party.

I've had years of psychiatry, and I ask about every six months - it's sort of like getting your oil checked - I ask, 'I'm not an actual narcissist, am I?' The learned men of psychiatry assure me that I meet none of the medical criteria.

Being in a successful marriage is no different than being cast in a successful movie. It's all about who you pick; in that first moment, did you pick the right person? I think you need to pick somebody who's more interested in being married than in getting married.

I'd like to build a TV company for myself.

I don't know what drives me.

There's this unbelievable bias and prejudice against quote-unquote good-looking people, that they can't be in pain or they can't have rough lives or be deep or interesting.

For me, the battle is finding the balance between wanting to spend time with my boys and then having enough perspective to still be the disciplinarian and, like, not be in the best friend business.

I'm not unashamed to say that I like movies that make me verklempt.

Show me someone who doesn't have some sort of experience that they would be uncomfortable for people to know about and I'll show you a dullard.

The Kennedys are our royals.

I couldn't have gotten sober without rehab because I needed the science.

I had met my now wife, Sheryl, and was attempting my first try at monogamy, which was not really in my nature at the time, and I wasn't able to do it.

I'm perfectly flawed... I've got tons of flaws.

As an actor and a fledgling director, I'm used to making snap decisions that I'll have to live with.

I wouldn't go back on my old days, though; everybody needs to have their wild years. It's just a question of when and I'd rather have had them early than be doing it as a mid-life crisis type thing.

Somewhere in my callow, misspent youth, I was smart enough to marry my best friend.

My deep dark secret is that I was a nerd in school. I liked the theater. I liked to study. I wasn't very good at sports.

I like doing things that are different, unexpected, and where I feel that either the role feels like a natural fit for me or it's a really big swing that I don't know if I'm going to connect on.

I loved fun. I spent my whole life in search of fun. I have not given up that part of myself.

Like most guys, I don't come to beauty regimes naturally. I'm dragged kicking and screaming by the best in the world.

I am the guy dressing up in, you know, the caveman outfit for the kids' birthday parties.

My son Matthew's beloved dog is a Jack Russell. His name is Buster. Matthew picked him as a puppy, when he was tiny himself.

Directors are not worried about casting beautiful women, but they are not sure that they want to cast great-looking men. My looks have prevented people from seeing my work.

If you treat China like a foe, surely she will become one.

I - you know, I loved politics more as a younger man.

Marriage is becoming sort of fake. It's almost like a handbag. Everybody wants the newest, greatest and latest. It becomes an event, and it's definitely a status symbol in our society. I'm not saying it shouldn't be; it absolutely should be - but you shouldn't be focusing on that.

Equality for everybody is great. That would be amazing.

I've come to really like Twitter. You really do get to see what I'm about, and I like sharing with my fans.

My dad is an attorney. I've always been interested in it. My sons are probably going to law school.

Sampling, statisticians have told us, is a much more effective way of getting a good census.

I'm a true centrist: my beliefs put me in the middle... You know what happens to people who drive in the middle of the road? They get run over.

Individuals usually do a better job than the government.

I am still in love with my wife.

If you're telling a story, and somebody is going to come out badly, it better be you.

One of the interesting things about Twitter is looking how famous people choose to use it. Take someone like Steve Martin, who I follow: it's all sorts of comic gems, nothing private, nothing personal - all jokes. Other celebrities are overtly personal - like Charlie Sheen. I do a mix of observations and updates.

The '80s were about trying to establish myself as an actor with a career. And being a teenager enjoying the fruits of being successful with lots of what I think is appropriate for that age.

Feng shui isn't open to interpretation.

In my bachelor days, the priority wasn't learning to cook.

I don't flip. I don't even dive into a pool - straight cannonball for me. No, thanks.

When you're writing personal stories, you have to be totally uncompromising - to the extent that you can be - about yourself. I know that if I am uber-uncompromising with myself, that gives me some latitude to write about others.

My hopes and aspirations haven't changed since I started in this business. They've been to be able to play drama, to be able to play comedy, to be able to play leading men, and to be able to play character roles. I have no other aspirations in this regard.

It's funny what actors take issue with. Some won't do parts where animals are in jeopardy; some won't ever play anyone remotely unlikable - 'Heroes only, please.' Some won't do violence. I have no such qualms.

Eleven days before 9/11, I was on a plane with the 9/11 hijackers who were carrying out a dry run.

Comedies always need to be provocative and catch your attention in a way that dramas don't have to.

What people do in their private lives is their business, and shouldn't be anybody else's business.

I am terrible with people's names.

I have been looking forward to this age of my life for a long time. In my twenties, I marked the days on the calendar - I was sick of playing high-school kids.

My life and the lives of many across the world have been deeply affected by lymphoma.

To achieve longevity you will have cycles. No one gets there in one straight shot.

Here's my theory: If a person gets worldwide fame at a young age, they're emotionally frozen at that moment. For me, that's 15 to 18, so you find yourself in your mid-20s being a glorified 15-year-old. What could possibly go wrong?

If I had been on 'Ally McBeal,' I would have been seen coming out of the shower on the first show.

Some actors specialize in shooting weapons and punching people. Some have the market on playing buffoons cornered, others specialize in roles that require heavy makeup or outrageous wardrobe. Some trade exclusively in a post-ironic blase attitude.

To go from playing Jack Startz in 'Behind the Candelabra' to playing JFK in the same year, I have now operated at the far ends of my range as an actor.

My thing is personal freedoms: freedoms for the individual to love whom they want, do with what they want. In fact, I want the government out of almost everything.

Getting married isn't going to make your relationship better. It's just a ceremony.

The minute you start making calculations about what people will think of you as a person based on your work as an actor, you're on the road to becoming a bad one.

The challenge as a parent is letting your kids fail in the right ways because that's where we do most of our learning.

I dont like being taken for granted anywhere in life. I dont want my vote taken for granted.

I think part of maturity is knowing who you are.

To be counter to the culture, you are by definition willfully and actively ignoring the culture, i.e., reality.