"We all believe what we read. I read how Tom Cruise and I were two big egos holding up shooting. I know that isn't true - but if I wasn't making a movie with him and I just picked up the paper, I'd believe it. That's interesting, isn't it?" "I got into acting so that I could meet girls. Pretty girls came later. First, I wanted to start off with someone with two legs, who'd smile at me and look soft." "I lived below the official American poverty line until I was 31." "If a lot of dogs are on the beach, the first thing they do is smell each other's ass. The information that's gotten somehow makes pacifists out of all of them. I've thought, 'If only we smelled each other's asses, there wouldn't be any war.'" "You go to the cinema and you realize you're watching the third act. There is no first or second act. There is this massive film-making where you spend this incredible amount of money and play right to the demographic. You can tell how much money the film is going to make by how it does on the first weekend. The whole culture is in the crap house. It's not just true in the movies, it's also true in the theater." "Stardom equals freedom. It's the only equation that matters." "I grew up thinking a movie star had to be like Rock Hudson or Tab Hunter, certainly nobody in any way like me." "God knows I've done enough crap in my life to grow a few flowers." "A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution." [on the administration of President George Bush and its invasion of Iraq] "For me as an American, the most painful aspect of this is that I believe that [this] administration has taken the events of 9/11 and has manipulated the grief of the country and I think that's reprehensible. I don't think, like many of us, that the reasons we have been given for going to war are the honest reasons. If they are saying it's about the fact they have biological weapons and might have nuclear weapons and that gives us the liberty to pre-empt and strike because we think they might hit us, then what prevents Pakistan from attacking India, what prevents India from attacking Pakistan, what prevents us from going into North Korea? I believe--though I may wrong because I am no expert--that this war is about what most wars are about: hegemony, money, power and oil." "One thing about being successful is that I stopped being afraid of dying. Once you're a star you're dead already. You're embalmed." [About his new film Stranger Than Fiction] "I'm really proud of it, and I've only said that about three times during my career." [About acting] "You get caught of guard during a take. Your mind goes wild and it just comes out 'Waaa, you talking to me!' " "I'm sixty-eight, I cry every chance I can." "Euthanasia is legal in Hollywood. They just kill the film if it doesn't succeed immediately." "I don't like the fact that I have to get older so fast, but I like the fact that I'm aging so well." [in 2005] "I became an actor because I believed I was a failure. In acting, because so few of us ever get work, I could feel proud and fail with dignity. I was born into what I now know was a dysfunctional family. I found that out in therapy three weeks ago." [on he and Gene Hackman as young stage actors and roommates in New York]: Psychologically, Gene/myself, we did not think about making it in the terms that people think about. We fully expected to be failures for our entire life. Meaning that we would always be scrambling to get a part. We were actors. We had no pretensions. There was more dignity in being unsuccessful.