I think I'm an actor because I have very strong imagination and empathy. I never studied acting, but those two qualities are exactly the qualities that make for an activist.

Everyone has a responsibility towards this larger family of man, but especially if you're privileged, that increases your responsibility.

I think sometimes what happens is that all of this feeling out of control manifests itself in trying to control your body; whether it's an eating disorder or talking about getting your nose fixed, as if that's going to be the solution to all the pressure.

Making love is like hitting a baseball. You just gotta relax and concentrate.

I was told I had an overabundance of original sin.

Do you really have to be the ice queen intellectual or the slut whore? Isn't there some way to be both?

In the U.S., they just want to know who you're sleeping with.

Children reinvent your world for you.

Now, Tim has been really, really busy, and it's been my job now to kind of deal with everything. And trying to figure out how we balance that, logistically it's a nightmare. But these little jobs make it much easier.

It's still not easy to find roles that offer more complex images of women.

We stand a chance of getting a president who has probably killed more people before he gets into office than any president in the history of the United States.

I'm a native New Yorker. Everything to do with New York feels like my family.

I look forward to being older, when what you look like becomes less and less an issue and what you are is the point.

When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you.

The only thing I can talk about is just forgiving yourself, because I do not have everything together. And so I tell people: No, you should see my house, it's a mess.

I feel my family's needs are a priority. I'm not comfortable with the idea of serving the many and ignoring my family.

I try to live my life every day in the present, and try not to turn a blind eye to injustice and need.

To know that once you decide to look at life outside of the narrow limits of just your world and start to understand that you can make a difference in very simple ways - in volunteering and all the way up to bigger world problems.

It will be great when it's not such a big deal when a woman gets a good job.

It is a different world than when I was growing up, and you started to just kind of maintain at thirty-five and just hope you can hope it together. People are a lot more vital than I am and doing all kinds of things and leading really important movements.

When I tell people I'm a comedian they say, 'Oh, are you funny?' I say, 'No, it's not that kind of comedy.'

So I would hope they would develop some kind of habit that involves understanding that their life is so full they can afford to give in all kinds of ways to other people. I consider that to be baseline spirituality.

Just because I haven't yet had any project surgery, I'm not going to knock it, because I think women have the right to do whatever they want to their bodies that make them feel good about themselves.

If you walk down the street and see someone in a box, you have a choice. That person is either the other and you're fearful of them, or that person is an extension of your family. And that makes you at home in that world and not fearful. So really it's very self-serving.

Before our kids start coming home from Iraq in body bags and women and children start dying in Baghdad, I need to know, what did Iraq do to us?

I think I'm an actor because I have very strong imagination and empathy. I never studied acting, but those two qualities are exactly the qualities that make for an activist.

You guys ask really long questions. In the U.S., they just want to know who you're sleeping with.

The only time I've really been away from my kids to do work was doing Shall We Dance because they both were in camp and it was the first time in twenty years that I haven't been with my kids.

I'm tired of being labelled anti-American because I ask questions.

Children re-invent your world for you.

Sometimes what happens is that, when you micromanage actors and moments, it just doesn't quite live.

One night I looked down and my rosary beads were glowing. And I realized that I did not want to see the blessed Virgin - I was terrified.

If sexuality means saying yes to life, then you should be able to remain sexual until the day you die.

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.

When I was a kid, the idea of why I wanted acting to be the thing I do for the rest of my life was different. It was, Oh yeah, I'll get girls and be famous.

And then, I suppose, there's also a cinematic reality on top of that. Because it was extremely difficult to keep tabs on, it was quite confusing acting that.