"You never really learn much from hearing yourself speak."

"Directing is really exciting. In the end, it's more fun to be the painter than the paint."

"I enjoy going on motorcycle trips and stopping in small towns and enjoying drinks with the locals."

"I think people in Italy live their lives better than we do. It's an older country, and they've learned to celebrate dinner and lunch, whereas we sort of eat as quickly as we can to get through it."

"In doing the screenplay for 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' the most important thing for me was to constantly go back to wherever the opposition would argue. So I had to keep reading all the books and articles about why McCarthy is such a good guy."

"I use my film-making to work through my deep questions and my deep problems. I think I could watch each film and tell you exactly which part of my psyche I'm trying to work out."

"If people see me having dinner with a beautiful woman, they immediately believe that I'm having a love affair with her. Of course that's rubbish. I'm not a playboy!"

"But I'm kind of comfortable with getting older because it's better than the other option, which is being dead. So I'll take getting older."

"Yes, I slouch. My mother tells me that."

"I bought a piano once because I had the dream of playing As Time Goes By as some girl's leaning on it drinking a martini. Great image. But none of it worked out. I can't even play Chopsticks. But I've got a nice piano at my house!"

"I've been working with Pat Robertson on Africa debt-relief, and we disagree on virtually everything except certain very specific, inalienable rights, and the truth is that morality and patriotism come in all shapes and sizes."

"Failures are infinitely more instructive than successes."

"I think you should automatically donate your organs because that would turn the balance of organ donation in a huge way. I would donate whatever anybody would take, and I'd probably do the cremation bit."

"In the '60s, when I was growing up, one of the great elements of American culture was the protest song. There were songs about the civil rights movement, the women's rights movement, the antiwar movement. It wasn't just Bob Dylan, it was everybody at the time."

"They say I was a bad Batman, that it was my fault, that I buried the franchise. But the truth is, it was a big project. I was pretty intimidated in that world. I did the best I could in the situation I was given."

"You have only a short period of time in your life to make your mark, and I'm there now."

"Run for office? No. I've slept with too many women, I've done too many drugs, and I've been to too many parties."

"The simple truth is that everyone has an opinion, everyone has the right to voice it, and they should if they want to."

"You make a lot of films, do you? You make a lot of films yourself? Yeah, I'd like to see you make a film first before you get to talk about it. What a jerk."

"There's no connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq."

"There is a strange pecking order among actors. Theatre actors look down on film actors, who look down on TV actors. Thank God for reality shows, or we wouldn't have anybody to look down on."

"I go on YouTube when somebody says to look something up."

"My parents were disappointed I didn't finish college, and they were really upset when I went to Hollywood to become an actor. I was a big disappointment to them."

"For me, the definition of a patriot is someone who is willing to constantly question the government; that's what separates us from other countries."

"I had to stop going to auditions thinking, 'Oh, I hope they like me.' I had to go in thinking I was the answer to their problem."

"It's possible for me to make a bad movie out of a good script, but I can't make a good movie from a bad script."

"I do know something about the news world. I was sitting on the floors of newsrooms since I was seven years old, and I've been around them my whole life. I understand that someone looks at a story with famous people in it, and you want to put it out."

"After doing One Fine Day and playing a pediatrician on ER, I'll never have kids. I'm going to have a vasectomy."

"We're picking on people we can beat."

"America can't beat anyone anymore."

"The government itself is running exactly like the Sopranos and they sit back and they make deals. And they say okay, 'I'm going do this: France, you're getting the pipelines.'"

"I'm not smart enough and I don't know enough about what's going on."

"I don't care. Charlton Heston is the head of the National Rifle Association. He deserves whatever anyone says about him."

"I don't like to share my personal life... it wouldn't be personal if I shared it."

"I grew up in the world of bad television, on my dad's sets and then as a young schmuck on dating shows and so on."

"I'd think, 'In a relationship, we should never have his kind of fight.' Then, instead of figuring out how to make it work, I looked for a way to get out of it. The truth is, you shouldn't be married if your that kind of person."

"When you're young you believe it when people tell you how good you are. And that's the danger, you inhale. Everyone will tell you you're a genius, which you are not, and if you understand that, you win."

"I'm the flavor of the month."

"I'm a Method actor. I spent years training for the drinking and carousing I had to do in this film."

"Who would name their kid Jack with the last words 'off' at the end of the last name? No wonder that guy is screwed up."

"I'm certainly the last person to give advice on, well, anything."

"I was in a bar and I said to a friend, 'You know, we've become those 40-year-old guys we used to look at and say, 'Isn't it sad?'"

"The idea that every time you do a film you're supposed to be tortured confuses me. I mean, guys who say, 'Oh, it's really tough, my character is really suffering' -come on. For us, even in the rotten ones we've had a good time. I don't think you have to suffer."

"The last real movie stars were probably Redford and Newman. And things were different then. There wasn't this amazing amount of magazines and information about them."

"People know everything about everybody now."

"It's incredibly unfair. You don't see a lot of 60-year-old women with 20-year-old men onscreen."

"I was watching 'Up In The Air' and I thought, 'Jesus, who's the old gray-haired guy?' And it was me. I never wear makeup for movies and now it's starting to show."

"I've been lucky enough to do a few films that will last longer than an opening weekend and those films are the ones I'm proud of."

"I don’t like to share my personal life… it wouldn’t be personal if I shared it."

"As you get older and ease your way into being a character actor you have to be comfortable with where you are in life and career, and I'm very comfortable with what I'm doing - working on projects I'm proud of."