"For the last six months people have been coming up to me and saying, 'I loved you in Pulp Fiction, Mr. Jackson.'" [1996] "I've played a lot of bad guys, 'cause that was the only work I could get. People saw my face and went 'oooh'." [On why he didn't read the complete play of "Othello" before acting in the film version in which more than half of the dialogue was cut:] "Why should I read all those words that I'm not going to get to say?" "I play characters. I don't think I really have a persona per se. I don't play the same guy every time. I show up, you don't know what I'm gonna do. I like it that way. I've intentionally tried to do it that way. I think that's what's interesting." "It's funny, a lot of people think I take myself seriously because I come off so serious sometimes. But it's not that I take myself seriously, I take what I do seriously. I came up around people who took acting seriously, who cared about acting, cared about the theater and, in the '70s, made movies that said something that mattered. I came up with those people, and I was a kid. Their ethos and credo became mine." "I don't believe in acting teachers for me."