Every other movie is one of those action things. I mean, 'Lost in Space'? A bunch of good actors running around shooting at special effects on a soundstage? I took my kids to see that and felt like I was on an acid trip.

I remember seeing Bill Hurt in New York once. I talked to him on the phone around 1988 and that's about it. I was shooting in New York and somebody said Glenn Close came by the set.

I like playing flawed characters, people who aren't perfect.

You can't think that you're playing a villain, or you'll end up with a cartoon. You have to think about him as a person and a hero.

We had training camp for a week, and we used the actual military drills of that period. We didn't have to work out much after hours, because going up and down hills all day was a good workout in itself.

Around mid-life everyone goes maniac a little bit.

I wrote a script. I actually enjoyed writing it more than acting. It's about the Irish rebellion of 1920, which is a fascinating period and place for me.

These days, you can do a TV series for five years and all of a sudden be on top of the business. Features don't even run in theaters very long anymore before going right to television.

I got to talking to an old actor, and he had a bunch of stories about the Rough Riders.

I was kind of confused. I thought, Well, if I get drafted, I'll go. Everybody was very concerned with it. I had friends who went. Some that came back and some that didn't.

I have family obligations and all that stuff. I get my kids six weeks in the summer, which is a real intense period of time. I'm with them every minute of the day.

I feel more comfortable doing films with groups of guys. It's a lot easier for me. There's a difference with women: you can't take them to dinner every night and go crazy.

I don't care about being a star. I can do a supporting role; I don't have to be a lead.

I'm probably satisfied with my career 80 percent of the time.

I've done about six comedies. Oddly enough, the script came to me from one of the guys in Platoon.

The Big Chill is one of those things that everybody can identify with. Between eight characters, they can pick somebody who's somewhat like them.

In this industry, the new owners prefer to kill anything they weren't responsible for.

I had already done a lot of research for Rough Riders, keeping notebooks and old photographs. Some of the books were antiques for that time period, with the covers falling off.

Take characters that Nicholson or De Niro play: they're not always tough.

To people outside, they think, Gee, that's great. You get to go here and there. The other side of that is our expression, This is location, not vacation.

I was so exhausted after fighting for the project for five years, shooting it was like the Bataan Death March.

I don't think a director should have any kids. I don't even think it's good for your physical health. Even guys in their 30s look exhausted because directors never get enough sleep. What I do is stressful enough.

Sometimes I think I'm real predictable to myself and other times... you always wonder, Is this really what I wanted to do? Did I make a mistake? Should I be doing something else?

I came in on the tail end of the old school of Hollywood.

My mother, sister and I watched through the windows as my father gambled.

Even my agents say, We don't know what this business is anymore.

Debra Winger doesn't let anything interfere with her performance, which is the way it should be.

I guess if I weren't an actor, I'd be a history professor.

This is all new to me, these re-releases. I don't know how these things do. I don't know if it will be people who saw it originally or young people.

There's a hysterical, tired sense of humor that comes after working 14 hours a day, six days a week. I like those things because they take the pressure off the constant stress.

Every other movie is one of those action things. I mean, 'Lost in Space'? A bunch of good actors running around shooting at special effects on a soundstage? I took my kids to see that and felt like I was on an acid trip.

While I was doing these plays in the beginning, I wasn't getting paid. I thought of it more as a hobby. Then I realized how seriously a lot of these people took what they were doing.

Rough Riders took 13 weeks to shoot, plus a week of training. The same guy trained us trained the cast in Platoon. Except, instead of radios, we used bugles to signal.

Most of what gets made now, you laugh your way through, go home and forget you've seen it.

I didn't know how to go about preparing for the part of someone who can't remember who he is. The frustration angle is written in, but there's also this incredible passive state.

I did work out every day. I needed it to have the endurance to do what needed to be done and not get hurt. I have such a new respect for action stars now.

Good managers have a bias for action.

Oh yeah, I'm a huge romance fan. And some women like action.

If nothing is to be done in the given situation, he must invent plausible reasons for doing nothing; and if something must be done, he must suggest the something. The unpardonable sin is to propose nothing, when action is imperative.

The international proletariat first appeared on the scene in the early Thirties of the nineteenth century, and its first great action was the French Revolution of 1848.

To stop terrorists before the strike, we must do three things: deny them entry into the country, curtail their freedom of action inside the country, and deprive them of material and moral support from within the country.

Infuse your life with action. Don't wait for it to happen. Make it happen. Make your own future. Make your own hope. Make your own love. And whatever your beliefs, honor your creator, not by passively waiting for grace to come down from upon high, but by doing what you can to make grace happen... yourself, right now, right down here on Earth.

But the way people commonly use the word nowadays it means something all of whose parts are mutually interdependent - not only for their mutual action, but for their meaning and for their existence.

In any ethical situation, the thing you want least to do is probably the right action.

A man's action is only a picture book of his creed.

The time has come for the American government to recognize the damage that has occurred to our economy, and to take firm action to curtail what I believe is both unfair and illegal foreign competition.

The methods of peace propaganda which aim at establishing peace doctrine by argument and by creating a feeling favorable to peace in general seem to fall short of reaching the springs of human action and of dealing with the causes of the conduct which they seek to modify.

There are two good things in life - freedom of thought and freedom of action.

Sometimes the situation is only a problem because it is looked at in a certain way. Looked at in another way, the right course of action may be so obvious that the problem no longer exists.