I kind of dwindled into acting.

I think it's good to meet smart people and talk.

Nobody has a franchise on what is good.

I still think I'm going to do something else when I grow up.

I just don't get invited to the same dinner parties I used to like to go to.

If I don't see my kids for six days, I start to get withdrawal pains.

I don't even like to use the word relationship. I don't know what it means.

I can't talk about foreign policy like anyone who's spent their life reading and learning foreign policy. But as a citizen in a democracy, it's very important that I participate in that.

I kind of dwindled into acting.

It made me think about a whole area of human activity that was not really a concern to me before that, because I was involved in reading Chinese history, or languages, or whatever.

I started getting jobs, and I thought it was going to be real easy.

I'm a 9/11 Republican.

I do believe all actors are smart.

I had no desire from an early age to be on the stage.

Acting is not about knowing all this stuff; it's about character.

Too often in the past, U.S. leaders have forced Israel to pay the price for American strategic interests in the Middle East - through concessions in the peace process as well as passivity in the face of Iraqi attacks.

I kind of have a dilettantish spirit about me.

I think you have an obligation to be an optimist. Because if you're not, nothing will change.

It's not like I'm the most famous person in the world.

But why should I run for office and lose what little influence I have?

I've seen people with a tremendous amount of educational background in the field not turn out to be terribly good actors, and I've seen people with no education in the field turn out to be people that I admire quite a bit.

Two, I actually learned a lot of things that served me very well when it came to repeating performances on stage, because it is a craft and you do need a technique for it.

The twentieth century has exhibited a barbarism and lack of respect for human life on a massive scale just about unknown before.

Anyone who devotes time and attention to what makes people tick, to me, is a smart person.

Artists speak the truth to the public without fear of retribution or damage to their careers.

Then I realized that to be really good at this requires a lot of energy and concentration and skill.

I saw and I met a lot of people who were in the field. It also provided a context in which I came to respect what the actor did, because I saw how difficult it actually was to do.

Involvement in public affairs is a legitimate use of celebrity.

But some actors I have met possess an intelligence that I can only dream of. It's about character, it's about behavior. They understand things about people that I simply don't see.

In Europe, people in the arts are considered part of the intelligentsia; they are considered part of the elite.

Nothing gets a bigger laugh than when you refer to things like ethics or human rights.

For about the first ten years of my career, I wasn't terribly motivated.

If you don't think you want to go on a train and read the paper every day and work from nine to six at night, there was something about the uncertainty when I was younger which was very attractive.

I was immature the way I handled the business. I saw myself as a tribune of the people.

You have to think an awful lot about your motivations or people's behavioral intentions or what their body language can indicate or what's really going on or what makes people sometimes do, sometimes, the irrational things they do.

It was always part of the plan to move into acting.

Be where the acting is. I live in Houston. Dallas is 4 1/2 hours away. I let them know there's no difference.

My mother keeps things in perspective for me. She makes me realize that the acting I do and love is no more important than what one of my brothers does-he works in a shoe repair shop. If my career ever tapers off, I'll go to college.

In Hungary, acting is a career for which one fits himself as earnestly as one studies for a degree in medicine, law, or philosophy.

I think acting is about forgetting yourself in order to give the best of yourself. It's passing through you more than you're creating it. You're not the flower, but the vase which holds the flower.

In LA, too many people want to go the quickest route from A to B. Method acting offers them that.

I don't see it as a form of healing, because if you have wounds that are bleeding I don't think acting will ever get them to stop. But I find acting is a form of illumination.

Maybe I can't act, but I know the gimmicks. I studied acting all my life and know what's good for me.

I know that if I'd had to go and take an exam for acting, I wouldn't have got anywhere. You don't take exams for acting, you take your courage.

I'm not acting, but I am acting.

I've done a lot of acting. I'm not saying I'm the greatest, but I'd love to act, I'd love to sing.

I had a bonding problem when I went off and boxed for five years. I was over in Europe and Asia fighting because I wanted to do something different; I was tired of acting. But the thing is, when I was done doing that, I couldn't get a job.

Acting for me is not that quid pro quo.

If you're acting, then there's a prescribed way to behave; whereas in life there's no prescribed way. So acting feels like a comfortable way to get through the day.