I'm less needy about needing to express myself through acting. I have many different lives outside of this that are extremely fulfilling.

If people lose their land, they have nothing. You lose your land - you lose your culture, you lose self.

One of the joys of being an actor is that you're always learning new things. And I've been doing this since I was 19, so there's been a lot of new things I have learned for each part. I always assume that I can do it.

Any political situation has many sides... We intellectualize the whole situation any way... We make our intellectual decisions based on our cultural background and how we live.

It's rare that a good writer will sit down and write a good script. Writers are greedy too, and they don't want to work without getting paid. But quality will find its way out.

I do my work as an actor, but another part of my work goes to the piece as a whole. I can be fairly detached looking at my work and be brutal on myself.

[on editing of the films] There is always a question of time, and the director. I've worked with a lot of directors who don't mind my involvement. They appreciated it.

I think that as human beings we tend to compartmentalize, and we have a selective morality based on the situation we're in.

A lot of making a movie is the comfort level of the people. It's just feeling open. We need to get along. We have to know something about each other.

(Sometimes when) someone's directing for the first time, they're afraid to include everyone - they have to prove they're the director.

Food is the only beautiful thing that truly nourishes.

America has never paid any attention to other people, so it's absurd for Bush to say that it's all in the best interests of the Iraqi people.

It's not enough to say that the Olympics is an athletic contest outside of politics, because it's not. The Chinese clearly are using the Olympics to recreate how they are viewed in the world and how they view themselves.

When you work as an actor, you've got to feel safe even in what appears to be the simplest things.

There's really one character for every actor. The voyage is to find that one character.

Shooting in New York can be a problem... I had to walk through a crowd, come in the front door, and play the scene.

Billions of people don't practice a religion at all.

Why is it when we have 10 million people in this country who say 'No', we still have a president who says 'Yes.' In a democracy, something's wrong here.

I haven't worked with people who are jealous or competitive. That's a particularly deadly attitude to have when you're working on a film.

It's human nature - we want to believe our children, our families, our President!

I have to admit, a manicured look works for me.

I had a friend in the neighborhood whose father had Playboy magazines, and we would go over and look at them. I remember cutting out pictures and hiding them in my room.

I've always maintained that all characters and all personalities are in all of us. The whole thing is available. You're not this or that, no one is.

Julia [Roberts]. She's got two kids and animals, and I think she's a night nibbler. There'd be crumbs everywhere.

On a movie set that works, you have your father figure, the director, you have your siblings, your other actors.

We've had too many World AIDS Days.

I know who I am. No one else knows who I am. If I was a giraffe, and someone said I was a snake, I'd think, no, actually I'm a giraffe.

I think movies probably are a mirror in some way so we can see ourselves in them.

If the United States marches into Iraq without the backing of the United Nations, that will be done entirely without the backing of the American people.

Sharon Stone. She is one of the most dedicated people I know, but also highly unedited.

I've stayed good friends with most of my girlfriends.

People don't understand what happiness is, so they have an idea of what will make them happy, but it never does.

I'm not that tough; I'm not that smart. I need life telling me who I am, showing me my mind constantly. I wouldn't see it in a cave.

It's nice to have money, but the first thing I did with money was buy my father a snow-blower, because my job was to shovel snow, and I wasn't there to do it any more, so I was able to buy him a blower.

I'm rarely in a situation where, if you have a good idea, it's not embraced. That's stupid. And I don't work with stupid people.

Things come out of nowhere, and you start evaluating the director, the cast, and all those other things going into it.

If you have any question in your mind, don't do it. If you go in thinking it's going to fix something that's wrong, don't do it.

I'm a 50 year-old guy and I'm not in shape like I was when I was 30.

I can see the character in a photograph, in the way a guy stands or holds his hands, the way he buckles his belt. I fantasize a lot looking at photographs. I'm sure that doesn't work for many people.

Even in comedies, you've got to feel safe for things to just happen in a way that is natural and free, and recognizable as human.

It was important for me to have a partner who was ballsy.

I don't know any of us who are in relationships that are totally honest - it doesn't exist.

Sometimes I'm kind of spacey. I'm like Ferdinand the bull, sniffing the daisy, not aware of time, of what's going on in the real world.

I've had an interesting life.

Mindfulness is a quality that's always there. It's an illusion that there's a meditation and post-meditation period, which I always find amusing, because you're either mindful or you're not.

If you can see the terrorists as a relative who's dangerously sick and we have to give them medicine and the medicine is love and compassion. There's nothing better.

I can't say I have control over my emotions; I don't know my mind. I'm lost like everyone else. I'm certainly not a leader.

I don't mean to toot my own horn, but if Jesus Christ lived in Chicago today, and he had come to me and he had five thousand dollars, let's just say things would have turned out differently.

To read your own mind is to look at your self and read your soul. Hatred becomes love and that is the path I am working on

Anything that's expanding the mind and heart is happiness. But it's not a goal.