I don't think playing a villain is my greatest talent.

Good directors say, Here's where the play is. They stand by the heart of the matter. Some of them stand beside it.

I don't think playing a villain is my greatest talent.

Shakespeare is the one who gets re-interpreted most frequently.

There is no problem that is not improved by effort, and no effort that is too paltry to be worth undertaking.

I came to New York in 1962 and it began to look like I might he able to make a living in 1972.

As for lawyers, it's more fun to play one than to be one.

If there's any business that instructs you in the strong hand of fate, it's show business. You can plan and plan, but it's what happens to you that really determines what your career will be like.

I've always done what I thought was good if I could live on what they were offering-and sometimes if I couldn't. So even when I was broke, my career didn't lack for interest.

I think the bait for doing something really is always the part.

Obviously the first roles that you're proud of are the ones that everybody else liked too.

If you're going to be born ugly and be an actor - the least they can do is let you play Lincoln.

I literally was saved by a role, from becoming a cab driver. I never did have to wait tables, though, so looking back I guess I had it pretty soft.

If I have to be typecast, I'd like it to be as Abraham Lincoln.

I enjoy listening to opera at home, occasionally, but I would much rather see it than just listen to it.

I got a note from my father, who said that Success is wonderful, if you don't inhale. That was his own aphorism, and I think it's the very best thing he could have said to me or anyone else on the subject.

I'm sort of obsessed with the news. That is a syndrome. But I don't watch a whole lot of TV.

The bad guys don't always get punished and the good guys are not necessarily pure.

I've been able to do things that allow me to hold my head up and still be popular.

Elvis transcends his talent to the point of dispensing with it altogether.

If you've got talent, stick with it... because talent wins out, without a doubt.

Eric McCormack is directing talent waiting to happen.

Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.

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.

Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.

I'm really happy that I got to work with such fresh talent. In a day when record companies are not particularly good at encouraging young, talented songwriters to come forward and get exposure, I think it's important to give tomorrow's songwriters the opportunity.

Write verse, not poetry. The public wants verse. If you have a talent for poetry, then don't by any means mother it, but try your hand at verse.

A best-seller is the golden touch of mediocre talent.

My big ears indicated a talent for music. This thrilled me.

You want to do something that shows some type individuality and talent and imagination - at the same time, you want to be truthful to the predecessors, because obviously the audience liked something about them and you have to replicate that experience to a certain extent.

The Negroes have little invention, but strong powers of imitation, so that they readily acquire mechanic arts. They have a great talent for music, and all their external senses are remarkably acute.

Two kinds of men generally best succeed in political life; men of no principle, but of great talent; and men of no talent, but of one principle - that of obedience to their superiors.

God gives talent. Work transforms talent into genius.

We worked very hard to make the lyrics suit the music. I can't, like Elton John, for example, compose by lyrics. Elton has a great talent for that. Whatever you give him, including your questions, he composes in half an hour and makes a great song out of it.

I'll always be there because I'm a skilled professional actor. Whether or not I've any talent is beside the point.

Ry Cooder for me is a master, a great master that has a wonderful feel for Cuban music. He's also paid tribute my talent a bit, even though I don't know half of what he knows.

The talent of a true writer and poet is in the ear.

Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent.

Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.

Talent is like a faucet, while it is open, one must write.

Writing is no dying art form in America because most published writers here accept the wisdom and the necessity of encouraging the talent that follows in their footsteps.

But Madonna has a small amount of talent when it comes to movies.

I was much more interested in the orchestra than the piano, but I did become fairly proficient as a pianist and my teachers felt I had talent and wanted me to become a good concert pianist and earn my living that way.

It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction to point that organ.

Don't show off every day, or you'll stop surprising people. There must always be some novelty left over. The person who displays a little more of it each day keeps up expectations, and no one ever discovers the limits of his talent.

Detroit is full of talent.

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.

Much as I cared for Joseph Kennedy, he was a classic example of that person in the arts with lots of brains and drive but little taste or talent.

The poverty from which I have suffered could be diagnosed as "Soho" poverty. It comes from having the airs and graces of a genius and no talent.