Friends come in herds and they leave in herds. Hollywood loves an adventure, but you have to hit bottom. Then they love to save you and be a part of it. Or think they're a part of it.

Money doesn't buy happiness. It buys great hookers - but not happiness.

Trans Am sales went up 70 percent after Smokey and the Bandit, and I was promised a free car every year for life by the Pontiac president.

Smokey and the Bandit was the first picture [Hal Needham ] directed, and I knew he could handle it. I had just directed Gator, and he saw my style and used that as a pattern.

I've always gotten along well with Texans. You've got to.

But then when I'm in a halfway successful movie, it irritates the hell out of the critics in New York, because they'd like to kill my pictures if they could. So maybe I'm pretty good in the movie. Then they use all these words like I'm 'surprisingly' good, or 'shockingly enough,' I'm good. It's like I crawled out from under a magazine and they're surprised I can act.

You get to a certain age, where you know you can't go over the wall, but I'll never get to the age where I can't go through it.