A lot of good actors tend to be quite introverted as people.

Life is just more comfortable if you're honest and open about everything. I spent so many years being in the closet about one thing or another.

The effort of learning. It's the same when you approach any new skill or technique, from a dance step to driving a car. The effort of learning stops you, at first, from doing it well.

Most of my career has been spent with the RSC doing Shakespeare, and the thing you learn from Shakespeare is that his historical plays don't bear anything other than a basic resemblance to history.

What drew me to acting in the first place was disguise.

I can feel the power of the words doing the work. Must trust language more.

I have a Woody Allen Jewish attitude to life: that it's all going to be disastrous. That it hasn't all been that way is simply down to some random quirk of fate.

It's good for actors to confront those things we have to act: panic, pain and death.

I don't believe in an afterlife.

I feel so sorry for younger actors who aren't able to have the opportunities that I had, starting out in repertory theatre. It's really tough on young actors now.

When I'm painting and drawing I only do people. Acting is obviously portraiture - and writing is as well.

Laws are confusing documents. They get in the way of justice.

The soul should always stand ajar ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.

At home, I relax by gardening, or just pottering.

I guess I fell into cooking.

We have to choose between what is right, and what is easy.

My mother likes what I cook, but doesn't think it's French. My wife is Puerto Rican and Cuban, so I eat rice and beans. We have a place in Mexico, but people think I'm the quintessential French chef.

Mike Vax plays trumpet the way you have to play in order to hold down the lead chair with Stan Kenton.

Steep yourself in your subject, work like hell, and love, honor and obey your hunches.

I think what's important for kids to know is that your decisions here on earth matter, your behavior matters and how you treat other people matters.

My decision on this matter is as certain and final as death and the staggering New Deal taxes.