The sitting around on the set is awful. But I always figure that’s what they pay me for. The acting I do for free.

I have not collected art. Art collected me. I never found paintings. They found me. I have never even owned a work of art. They owned me.

Nothing human is foreign to us

I remember just before going onto the soundstage, I'd look in my dressing room mirror and stretch myself to my full 5'5" or 5'6 whatever it was-to make me appear taller and to make me able to dominate all the others and to mow them down with my size.

I had the advantage of reading the book, and when the script was first submitted to me, it was just another gangster story - the east side taking over the west side and all that.

Live beyond your means, then you're forced to work hard, you have to succeed.

Of course, I started as a collector. A true collector. I can remember as if it were only yesterday the heart-pounding excitement as I spread out upon the floor of my bedroom The Edward G. Robinson Collection of Rare Cigar Bands. I didn't play at collecting. No cigar anywhere was safe from me.