If you're going to be born ugly and be an actor - the least they can do is let you play Lincoln.

As for lawyers, it's more fun to play one than to be one.

There is no problem that is not improved by effort, and no effort that is too paltry to be worth undertaking.

I enjoy listening to opera at home, occasionally, but I would much rather see it than just listen to it.

Separation is painful, and there's such a thing as doing it too much - the limits are how much it hurts.

I literally was saved by a role, from becoming a cab driver. I never did have to wait tables, though, so looking back I guess I had it pretty soft.

Painting is very interesting.

I've always done what I thought was good if I could live on what they were offering-and sometimes if I couldn't. So even when I was broke, my career didn't lack for interest.

I think the bait for doing something really is always the part.

The virtue of the country is that it makes you thirsty for the city.

That's where I'd like to be: when the business says here's a good actor who is marketable so we can use him. Just that.

When I was achild my worldwasn’t blackand white, it was grey, until I gotbeat upenough timesto realizemy skin wasbeige, anddifferent

Vitality shows not only in the ability to persist but in the ability to start over.

I refuse to try to explain everything because if you know too much about yourself you become impotent. Better not to know what it is that makes you tick.

The people know what the land knows.

My parents absolutely did not think of themselves as part of the Great Migration. They knew they were part of a great wave. No one really talked about it in those terms or gave it a name.

When good befalls a man he calls it Providence, when evil fate.

The origin of all power is in the people, and they have an incontestable right to check the creatures of their own creation.

I shot down some German planes and I got shot down myself, crashing in a burst of flames and crawling out, getting rescued by brave soldiers.

When you have your heart broken for the first time, you gain depth.

It's amazing, especially coming from the small city of Paterson, to have all of those people just being behind you and supporting your career and understanding where you come from.