What I do for a living is listen.

When you're young, you're always concerned about how you're being seen and how you're being criticized.

Why do women get paid less money? It doesn't make any sense.

You can ask anyone who knows me, I've never said a racist or prejudiced thing in my life.

You just don't understand humility until you have children and get divorced.

Again, in Wag the Dog, war has to be declared by an act of congress. But if you go to war, you don't have to declare war. You're just at war and we did that, which is not legal.

I don't think of my life as a cliche, but I'm a cliche eccentric. Complete with a strange name - I mean, who's named Val? How many Vals do you know? I mean, really?

I don't watch television, but I saw 'The Office' by accident. I thought it was so sophisticated, the Victorian love story, and so bold. We'd do anything, all of us, to not work in that environment, and then I'm sitting there watching hours of it.

I never had a business plan. I did, actually - I'm lying. My business plan was to get lucky, and I did; that was great. And then my second business plan was to get lucky again, and there, I faltered.

I'm going to put a museum on my ranch and people keep saying, 'That's a huge idea.' Yeah, it's big, but not bigger than the average big movie. A hundred million dollars in the art world is a substantial amount of cash to do anything. That's maybe a big gallery's total sales for a given year.

It's fun to look at people that are so good at acting that aren't actors, like David Bowie creating a mystique about rock n' roll. I've listened to 'Ziggy Stardust' as much as any rock n' roll fan - I don't really know what it's about, but it sure is fun to think about David Bowie as this mad creation.

Jim Thompson understood something about the serial killer before the psychology caught up to it, which is that they are detached to it and they do want to get caught.

Life is precious, and when someone dies it's an opportunity to realise how precious it is. My brother drowned when I was 17. He was 15. I think I grew from that. My father didn't. It really crushed him.

Mark Twain created a new type of literature and not a lot of people can say that. Not a lot of people can say they're absolutely original and completely self-made.

My children have absolutely no interest in my fame. They're very sophisticated, and they have a spiritual perspective on material things because we go to church.

One out of 100 citizens of the U.S. is going to prison, and it's not that the system is making criminals, it's that it's making criminals better criminals. We're breeding them like rats and it has to change.

Partly because the town is just finicky, there are strange Catch 22 clauses in the consciousness of this community and one of them was that you, I found out, you can't do a comedy unless you've just done a comedy.

Postman is a media analyst and his theory is that television doesn't influence our culture, but that it is our culture and the presidency and anything that relies on television.

The good reviews that people have told me about through the years haven't really helped me do my job. So it's kind of like, if your hair turns out right you want to go out, you don't just want to stay in and look in the mirror. That's kind of what reading a review is like to me; it's like reveling in something that's just one night.

The Secret Service is a strange group. They don't really have a leader. It's not set up like a military. Each one is supposed to be able to act like a leader when something comes up.

There was such a relationship between the buffalo and the American Indian - the Indians would eat them, live inside their pelts, use every part of the body. There was almost no separation between the people and the animals.

Unless a Western's made money - doesn't matter who made the money, doesn't matter what the subject is - if the last one didn't make any money, you can't make another one for a four-year period. Westerns more than any genre.

We take what's shown on television as the truth, and it isn't. News isn't even the truth on television. If you look up the definition of what news is, it isn't that what we're watching on the new - it's entertainment.

With legitimate journalists I've always had a great time - I've never gone out of my way to court the press. That's probably cost me some money, but I've always had the respect of my peers.

Youth is seen as everything. You don't know anything when you're young. It's great being older, just having a more balanced perspective. I wake up and realise that what seemed to be important last year no longer is. I'm increasingly grateful for every day.

My perception is that I've never done anything but work really hard.

Without deadlines and restrictions I just tend to become preoccupied with other things.

If you think that by threatening me you can get me to do what you want... well, that's where you're right. But - and I am only saying this because I care - there's a lot of decaffeinated brands on the market that are just as tasty as the real thing.

I respect people who can do both careers, like Will Smith and a couple of other people who have done it, but I just don't know when they sleep.

I'm very wary of news on television.

A lot of old guys in movies are like cowboys - they talk like cowboys and they dress like cowboys.

Acting is very immediate.

Being creative and making money in the theater is very challenging.

Daryl Hannah likes to goof around with fashion, but she does have pretty impeccable taste.

Hollywood is wonderful, but it does eat its young.

Hollywood's like a warehouse. It's just a place that you go. What's interesting in the warehouse has to do with the creative people.

I can safely say that no one who has ever won an Oscar didn't want to win an Oscar.

I have two children and they're young yet but all of the children that I know really inspire me.

I just don't think I've ever been comfortable at public functions and selling myself as an entity.

I love that Bob Dylan asked me to be in the first movie he wrote.

I sang the songs in 'The Doors'.

I think death is just a transition to another state of consciousness.

I think part of my reputation has to do with the difficult roles I've played. Actors do tend to get identified with their characters.

I'm a character actor, but I look like a leading man.

If you look up the definition of news in the dictionary, it isn't what you watch on TV.

If you're in a hit movie, it's good to be in another hit movie straight away.

It is a weird thing that actors have people applaud when they're done working. I still find that entertaining.

It's a really weird thing, modern divorce. I found out I was getting divorced on television. That was kind of weird.

It's the first time that I've ever had an art show based on a film, but it's a photography collage.

It's the persona that makes you a leading actor. A leading actor has something extra that's fun to watch. But it isn't usually about acting.