Nature's far too subtle to repeat herself.

I don't want to be a star. If you have to label me anything, I'm an actor - I guess. A journeyman actor. I think 'star' is what you call actors who can't act.

I'm about as Chinese as Herbert Hoover.

A writer can write in an attic, or on top of a bus. Or with a sharp stick in some wet cement. To act, an actor has to have words. A stage. a camera turning.

What use is a good thought if no one agrees with it?

I've never tried to learn the art of acting. I have been in the business for years but I still can't tell what acting is or how it's done.

I won't go up in a plane, but if a play crashes, I'll jump into the next one that comes along and take it up for a spin.

At every step the child should be allowed to meet the real experience of life the thorns should never be plucked from his roses.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

Nor is he the wisest man who never proved himself a fool.

When you improvise, you work off the laughs from the audience, but when you step on stage to do standup, it's silent.

Now today, moment by moment, realize that each person and event that happens is life for you. Life is not somewhere else. See how fully you can accept the life that presents itself to you now.

I hate two kinds of sentences you hear in workshops, the ones beginning "I really like ..." and the ones beginning "My problem with this poem is ..."

The songs I had are withered Or vanished clean. Yet there are bright tracks Where I have been.

A little folly is desirable in him that will not be guilty of stupidity.

I don't really worry about being typecast much. I mean, everyone in Hollywood is typecast to a degree.

Nations and empires flourish and decay, By turns command, and in their turns obey.