There`s not a lot of good movies being made.

At this stage, what would be rewarding would be for audiences to want to watch.

Well, I think that when you direct a movie or write it. And in the case of the two movies I did, I wrote and directed, they occupy a special place for you.

You build a cage based on your sense of the truth and your sense of the aspects of the character that need to tell the story. If you`ve done your job right, which I`ve had varying degrees of success doing at different times in my life, then you`re able to function very freely within that cage.

What happens is things come to you - director, script - and if you respond to it, it`s because it`s tapping into some part of what`s inside you, and different roles tap into different parts.

There are a few directors around who I have some excitement about spending my $7 at the theatre watching their movies.

Your life is what you bring to any story. This is a life craft. It`s "How do you feel? Who are you? What do you have to say?"

Yeah, I had actually tried to stop acting before I made Dead Man Walking.

I think we all have light and dark inside us.

[Discussing Oliver Stone] I think that his basic pig nature keeps him from doing the best of what he ought to do. And it keeps him from being someone I want to run into.

The major studios are by and large banks and they give you what is by and large a loan to make a movie. Like banks, they want their money back plus.

If the primary statement of the film is that if you have good abs it`s OK to kill people, I pass.

Marriage ain`t easy, but it`s great most of the time.

If you`re willing to put two thoughts into a picture then you`re already ahead of the game.

On any movie I`m involved with, I say what I think.

That on a romantic level, if you feel it about somebody and it`s pure, it means that they do too.

I love acting, truly my favorite people are actors.

I`ve never really been one to get what they call stage fright so much.

I think life`s an irrational obsession.

Well, look at all of these summer blockbusters. You can`t help but laugh a little, because you`ve already seen a lot of these movies 482 times.

Oh, I`m a big-mouth. I said a lot of things.

The horror of the Academy Awards is what the press does leading up to it, to make it a popular TV show. Where they`ll actually make it like it`s an arm- wrestling event between two actors. That becomes very petty, and that`s something that`s embarrassing to follow up with accepting the invitation to the party.

This might be the last thing anybody would see, but I`m probably shy. I`ve never gone to a party where I didn`t drink alcohol. I have a great time, but I`m not comfortable. My straight nature is not very social. That doesn`t mean I haven`t caught myself being terribly arrogant.

If there`s anything disgusting in the movie business, it is the whoredom of my peers.

(On his role in Assassination of Richard Nixon) "It was the hardest thing I`ve ever done. My wife thinks it`s the best. I don`t call it my best, because either I`ve done something well or I haven`t. I think I did this one well. I`d go back and fix some things in everything I`ve done. Usually, if I`ve done something really well, I`d only re-shoot half the film."

I like to believe that love is a reciprocal thing, that it can`t really be felt, truly, by one.

You try to do your best at what you`re getting paid for.

I`m not a breakfast eater.

The bottom line is, you love your wife, you do your best with that.

My favorite thing to do is not act - it`s that simple.

I was brought up in a country that relished fear-based religion, corrupt government and an entire white population living on stolen property that they murdered for and that is passed on from generation to generation.

I think it`s much more important to direct movies but if it`s going to take five years between each one then I`ll have to make up for that.

I think that I`ve still not been successful at playing the role of the retired actor, and I`d like to work on that.

If I win the lottery, I`m gonna direct three to four pictures every four to five years, instead of one - and there won`t be time to act.

The bigger issue is that it`s an absolutely stupid notion that you should take the title of someone`s profession and attach it to what they should not do. It has nothing to do with citizenry.

In between, I go broke because I seem to do movies where you`re not paid a lot as an actor.

I don`t have any particular excitement about working with any specific director or actor at this point.

Yeah, I had a tremendous time shooting in Nebraska. I like that state a lot, all over it.

There`s a lot of mediocrity being celebrated, and a lot of wonderful stuff being ignored or discouraged.

So if we have anything original to offer, it`s to speak from our own life about the society we`re in.

Love is a mess, at best, and I figure it can be very real in spite of all the things people try to attach to it.

I don`t like any directors. I don`t get along with any of them. Mostly I think they`re a bunch of whiny people without any point of view. So I don`t want to be around them at six o`clock in the morning with make-up and bells on. And I`m probably the same way for the actors on my set - but that`s their problem.

He`s one of the few legends who isn`t a disappointment. - on Clint Eastwood

I`ve always operated under the notion that audiences don`t always know when they`re being lied to, but that they always know when they`re being told the truth. If there are what I think are unsung truths to be talked about in a film, through a character, through a story, and that dominates the piece, that`s the key for me. I think the biggest thing is to not participate in the damaging, lying cinema.

It has nothing to do with the emotional demands of a role; I`ve done comedies that are as draining to me as any drama.

There is no re-inventing the wheel.

It varies from role to role and the type of the piece and the people you`re working with. All those factors contribute to how you function on a movie.

I`m a little bit computer illiterate.

The Madonna stuff just made it clear. After it was over, I could see what was left that I was in control of. I`m very fond of my ex-wife, but at 24, I didn`t realize the difference between a great first date and a lifetime commitment. Interview with Lynn Darling, 1991.

[On his marriage to Madonna] She was in the process of becoming the biggest star in the world. I just wanted to make my films and hide. I was an angry young man. I had a lot of demons and don`t really know who could`ve lived with me at the time. I was just as badly behaved as her, so I can`t point the finger of blame.

I think it`s really important to be able to feel your own life, and I had felt so numbed by what had been a kind of surreal saturation of what was going on in the Middle East and what it was going to mean, particularly relative to my kids` future and things like that.

I met her on the shoot of that video (Material Girl). Madonna had done "Like a Virgin", so she was a phenom, but nothing could have told anybody what would happen next. I describe that marriage as loud. That`s how I remember it. And frankly, I don`t recall having a single conversation in four years of marriage. I`ve talked to her a couple of times since, and there`s a whole person there. I just didn`t know it.

I think you start to prepare the minute you read something.

Sacrificing American soldiers or innocent civilians in an unprecedented preemptive attack on a separate sovereign nation may well prove itself a most temporary medicine.

Somewhere along the line, the actions of this government are the actions of me.

I really love to make movies.

E.L. Doctorow had a quote I`ve used a lot of times, that the responsibility of the artist is to know the time in which he lives.

With the Academy Awards, if you`re standing there and looking out, you`re not going to see many people who can find their butt with their hand.

Nic Cage (Nicolas Cage) is no longer an actor. He`s more like a performer. [1999]

There`s an interesting parallel between Bush (George W. Bush) and Richard Nixon. While Nixon (Richard Nixon) was clearly a superior statesman and in many ways a more intelligent politician, what they share is a kind of boldness in how they emote their insecurities. What we`re finding with George Bush, part of what`s familiar to people and that adds to his likability for many, is that there`s a commonality of deep insecurity and his handling it with a kind of bravado. What they both did is handle things with a similar certainty - certainty being the `disease of kings`.

Child-rearing is my main interest now. I`m a hands-on father.

"I became an actor because of Robert De Niro".

I don`t consider myself specifically political, you know? I think of working as an actor as being a human thing. The concerns I have that fall into politics are human concerns.

I can never get ahead of the game because of the movies I do.

I had a house burn down once, and everything in life burned, except my family, and it was so liberating. I didn`t have a bad moment about it. It sort of reinvigorated my interest in a lot of things. I wonder if there should be some kind of anarchy.

Hollywood is much more creatively corrupt than it is economically [corrupt]. It takes $1 for them to kill their dreams. Their dreams are worth more than $1.

«There`s the death penalty as society deals with it and legislates it, and I`m against it.»