"He is just like I was at his age." [talking about Gary Oldman] "I was lousy in school. Real screwed-up. A moron. I was antisocial and didn't bother with the other kids. A really bad student. I didn't have any brains. I didn't know what I was doing there. That's why I became an actor." Interviewed on "Inside the Actors Studio," Hopkins remarked, "I once asked a Jesuit priest what was the best short prayer he knew. He said, 'fuck it,' as in 'fuck it; it's in God's hands.'" "The Welsh people have a talent for acting that one does not find in the English. The English lack heart." "To hell with this stupid show business, this ridiculous showbiz, this futile waste of life. I look back and see a desert wasteland. All those years spent in a fake enviroment. Everything was a fake." - Anthony Hopkins, December 1998 [On becoming a U.S. citizen in 2000] "America has been very generous to me, magnanimous really. I thought it would be good to give something back. It was a decision of the heart." "I was really sort of on a prolonged acid trip. I saw things and had peculiar quasi-religious experiences. I thought I was John The Baptist, and I would talk to the sea at Malibu and the sea would talk back to me. It was weird." - on his days as alcoholic while he was hooked on Mexican spirit tequila [On his most famous character, Dr. Hannibal Lecter]: "I think he might be a very interesting person to have lunch with, provided that *you* weren't the lunch." "One of the people I got to know years ago, which was a great privilege, was Laurence Oliver. He was like a laser - that was his power. And the only actor I've met since who had that same quality of laser-like determination is Russell Crowe. The first day I started working with him, I thought, 'That guy's got it.' The best way to describe Russell is, he's like a shark circling round. He was argumentative. He argued with the director all the time. I don't know Russell that well, but I admire him, and you know, whatever he's got to do really. I really like him because he's ballsy, he's got guts, he's macho and all the rest of it. He's going through his bad boy period, but he's basically a nice guy." "I am able to play monsters well. I understand monsters. I understand madmen."