I'm incredibly happy to be doing my own thing in New York.

I played the best role I've ever seen on TV or film in the last five years. It was hugely gratifying.

You can't mess up. If you do, everyone wants to kill you.

It took the producers a while to realize I wanted a full-bodied life. I wanted to get out before I felt I'd sacrificed so much to get somewhere that I couldn't afford to leave.

They understood why I left ER. It wasn't just about a guy.

Physics has the cutest words.

People can get certain good things out of fame, but until it killed a princess nobody ever talked about how bad it can be.

It took a long time to get out of my contract. The producers thought I was negotiating for more money.

When you walk away from a really wonderful job like that, you start messing with everyone's priorities. It's like you're dissing them.

Only the patients have to take off their clothes. I think I'm pretty safe.

There's only so much you can do with an attorney on a show that's about New York policemen.

I'm a terrible patient, and I find that doctors can be very condescending.

I'm incredibly happy to be doing my own thing in New York.

I had my electricity turned off three times because I never had time to pay my bills. It was a joke. I'm making a ton of money, and I'm walking around my apartment with flashlights.

I love going to the set every day, because Noah Wylie will be there waiting.

I'm from the theater. I never wanted to be a star.

I love having no sense of tomorrow or yesterday.

I don't get rattled about the big things. I get rattled when I have to pick up my laundry, get gas in the car, pick up a script.

I never wanted to be a star.

It's amazing how everyone has an opinion on how you should live your life.

Series television is either a nightmare or the best thing in the whole world. It really depends on, I think, where you are in your life.

Why does anybody want to be famous? You know what's important to me? Having lunch! Pasta! Seeing my friends! Is that so crazy?

I think it's more interesting to play a place where no one really knows you, but I think touring is also great.

The North Koreans or Chinese may have a million men in uniform but it's about how you perform.

When you have learned compassion for yourself, compassion for others is automatic.

I have three kids and a wife, and any moments that aren't dedicated to working on this film in some way, or family, are immediately reserved for sleep.

In my career, I've really wanted to sort of be a morpher and not show my own identity.

I love moments in film where there's no dialogue, and somebody communicates something with a look that kills you. That's why I love going to the cinema.

Congress has shortchanged not only foreign aid but foreign policy. A mistaken notion that diplomats are unimportant and hence undeserving of support grips conservative legislators, especially.

There was definitely a moment, a time after 'The Hand That Rocks the Cradle', when I did get offered a lot of women in jeopardy-type roles. But I couldn't do it, physically, I just couldn't. But now I know what I know, I wonder if I should have played the whole fame game a little more.

The strongest thing you can cultivate as an entrepreneur is to not rely on luck but cultivating an ability to recognize fortunate situations when they are occurring.

The best argument for teaching poetry is to put a three-year-old or a four-year-old and read Dr. Seuss, or Robert Louis Stevenson, and to feel how the child and you are engaging in something that's really basic to the animal, which is passing on in these rhythmic ways, something that came from somewhere.

I think as you grow up, you have the adjustment to responsibilities. Now you could say that's easy or not easy... but that's a difficult period of your life. You have the loss of loved ones, which then means you have more responsibilities. Periods in business when things don't run evenly.

I have an intense desire to constantly make music, and I don't feel that way about anything else.

If the poem has no obvious destination, there's a chance that we'll be all setting off on an interesting ride.

To know a community is to know its food.

All across Africa, the Pacific and the Americas, we find cultures that didn't know about mouth kissing until their first contact with European explorers. And the attraction was not always immediately apparent. Most considered the act of exchanging saliva revolting.

I feel empowered the fact that I can look the way that I do on stage and in photos - I can look that way any time I want. And I feel like it's important message to other women that they can do it, too.

The outdoor recreational industry is highly seasonal and heavily influenced by weather conditions.

We deny and have always denied having the slightest link with al-Qaeda.

There's no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.

The capacity to influence radical groups can diminish significantly once they are viewed as indispensable coalition partners and are able to intimidate the electorate with the authority of the state behind them.

Shooting stars are not stars at all. They re just rocks that enter the atmosphere and catch fire under friction. What we wish on when we see one is only a trail of debris.

I follow politics, but I don't like to discuss it.

The next time someone tells you we can trim the budget by cutting aid, I hope you will ask whether it will come at the cost of more people dying.

In other words, if you - the cost of promoting movies, the advertising and promotion of a movie, the budget is almost as large as the cost of the movie.