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.

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.

From the beginning, the series has been story driven - I began with a story idea - but research feeds it.

I don't write drafts. I write from the beginning to the end, and when it's finished, it's done.

Since the beginning, I always loved the game. When you grow up in Montreal, one day you want to be a professional hockey player. When I was six or seven, I knew that was what I wanted.

Before beginning, plan carefully.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

The people who voted for President Obama are just beginning to wake up to exactly what they brought in. The 'change' they envisioned is not the 'change' they have gotten.

Religion has caused more harm than any other idea since the beginning of time. There's nothing good I can say about it. People use it as a crutch.

And that's how I start myself. I usually go back a couple of pages, maybe to the beginning of the chapter, and I start reading. And as I'm reading, I'm tweaking - putting in a different word, changing the syntax, putting that clause over there, you know that sort of thing.

In the beginning it was all black and white.

A palindrome is a word or pattern that instead of developing in different directions it folds in on itself so that the beginning and end mirror each other, that they are the same.

Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins.

At the beginning of 1955 only about 60 percent of American homes had TVs.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Most musicians count at the beginning, and never count and talk to their musicians after that. They only talk to them at the end of the song. But I would count with them and talk.