It's not good to make sentimental journeys. You see the differences instead of the sameness.

There are five stages in the life of an actor: Who's Mary Astor? Get me Mary Astor. Get me a Mary Astor type. Get me a young Mary Astor. Who's Mary Astor?

The reminder that there are people who have worse troubles than you is not an effective pain-killer.

Life without emotions is like an engine without fuel.

A painter paints, a musician plays, a writer writes - but a movie actor waits.

Once you start asking questions, innocence is gone.

the boys had learned that laughter stilled anxiety. It cleared away mystery. If you could laugh at something, it erased its importance.

The man who goes fishing gets something more than the fish he catches.

A person without a memory is either a child or an amnesiac. A country without a memory is neither a child nor an amnesiac, but neither is it a country.

Our security must be threatened in order for us to appreciate it.

Audiences will get just as tired of people wrestling on a bed as they did of Tom Mix kissing his horse.

Edward Gibbon, in his classic work on the fall of the Roman Empire, describes the Roman era's declension as a place where "bizarreness masqueraded as creativity.

Men don't even ask me out. I can't remember the last time I was asked out on a date, and I'm talking years here. I spend my life more and more alone.

There's a whole world of bad TV that's along similar themes - the cop drama.

My whole career from the early 70s on has been mind-blowing. I didn't imagine in my life that I would ever be considered a guitar player first of all because I started off as a singer.

To totalitarianism, an opponent is by definition subversive; democracy treats subversives as mere opponents for fear of betraying its principles.

... do not spare me in anything -- let there be less and less of me in everything.

Smart beauty is about looking your best and feeling your best and never overpaying for it.

One of the last courses I taught was on the Russian short story, which I love.