Yeah, I had actually tried to stop acting before I made Dead Man Walking.

I think that I've still not been successful at playing the role of the retired actor, and I'd like to work on that.

What happens is things come to you - director, script - and if you respond to it, it's because it's tapping into some part of what's inside you, and different roles tap into different parts.

I think we all have light and dark inside us.

I really love to make movies.

Sacrificing American soldiers or innocent civilians in an unprecedented preemptive attack on a separate sovereign nation may well prove itself a most temporary medicine.

There's not a lot of good movies being made.

On any movie I'm involved with, I say what I think.

Child-rearing is my main interest now. I'm a hands-on father.

I don't have any particular excitement about working with any specific director or actor at this point.

There are a few directors around who I have some excitement about spending my $7 at the theatre watching their movies.

Yeah, I had a tremendous time shooting in Nebraska. I like that state a lot, all over it.

Yeah, I had actually tried to stop acting before I made Dead Man Walking.

I've never really been one to get what they call stage fright so much.

I like to believe that love is a reciprocal thing, that it can't really be felt, truly, by one.

If there's anything disgusting in the movie business, it is the whoredom of my peers.

I'm not a breakfast eater.

Somewhere along the line, the actions of this government are the actions of me.

You try to do your best at what you're getting paid for.

Love is a mess, at best, and I figure it can be very real in spite of all the things people try to attach to it.

At this stage, what would be rewarding would be for audiences to want to watch.

There is no re-inventing the wheel.

The bottom line is, you love your wife, you do your best with that.

It has nothing to do with the emotional demands of a role; I've done comedies that are as draining to me as any drama.

I think life's an irrational obsession.

Well, look at all of these summer blockbusters. You can't help but laugh a little, because you've already seen a lot of these movies 482 times.

I love acting, truly my favorite people are actors.

Well, I think that when you direct a movie or write it. And in the case of the two movies I did, I wrote and directed, they occupy a special place for you.

There's a lot of mediocrity being celebrated, and a lot of wonderful stuff being ignored or discouraged.

Marriage ain't easy, but it's great most of the time.

That on a romantic level, if you feel it about somebody and it's pure, it means that they do too.

In between, I go broke because I seem to do movies where you're not paid a lot as an actor.

Oh, I'm a big-mouth. I said a lot of things.

So if we have anything original to offer, it's to speak from our own life about the society we're in.

I think you start to prepare the minute you read something.

If you're willing to put two thoughts into a picture then you're already ahead of the game.

My favorite thing to do is not act - it's that simple.

Anger can be a problem, but it has tremendous potential, too. It's just figuring out what to do with it.

Craft comes into acting later rather than sooner. I was somebody who had to learn through a process - a natural actor doesn't need to.

I am a limousine liberal.

I can always see light in any situation. It's just the way I'm made.

I don't consider myself specifically political, you know? I think of working as an actor as being a human thing. The concerns I have that fall into politics are human concerns.

I had a house burn down once, and everything in life burned, except my family, and it was so liberating. I didn't have a bad moment about it. It sort of reinvigorated my interest in a lot of things.

I just want real creative freedom without worrying about, you know, car payments.

I live in the energy and rhythm of the character. To some degree, that's true of every actor I've worked with.

I love stories about people who are smart enough to know that what they're doing is destroying them, but that knowing that doesn't help them.

I'm a huge Woody Allen fan. Good movie, bad movie, it doesn't matter - I just like his movies.

I'm always frustrated when somebody makes a movie out of a book and they leave the book behind, or the heart of it.

I've always operated under the notion that audiences don't always know when they're being lied to, but that they always know when they're being told the truth.