Our life is looking forward or looking back, that's it. Where is the moment?

A lot of actors choose parts by the scripts, but I don't trust reading the scripts that much. I try to get some friends together and read a script aloud. Sometimes I read scripts and record them and play them back to see if there's a movie. It's very evocative; it's like a first cut because you hear 'She walked to the door,' and you visualize all these things. 'She opens the door' . . . because you read the stage directions, too.

I am more alive in the theater than anywhere else, but what I take into the theater I get from the streets.

I wouldn't be interested in [nowadays] television simply because I think it goes too fast. Except if something was maybe a play on television or some great television script.

People are always asking me to do Shakespeare - at home, at colleges, on film locations, in restaurants. It's like playing a piece of music, getting all the notes. It's great therapy.

It's not personal, it's strictly business

Did you know I started out as a stand-up comic? People don't believe me when I tell them. That's how I saw myself, in comedy.