I love discourse. I'm dying to have my mind changed. I'm probably the only liberal who read Treason, by Ann Coulter. I want to know, you understand? I like listening to everybody. This to me is the elixir of life.

The first role I ever played I had the lead and it's pretty much stayed that way, though people take great relish in calling me a character actor, which I am. There are a lot of short parts I could play, but I only do them when they are like this ("A Few Good Men"), central to the idea of the movie.

Son, we live in a world that has walls and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You!?

I am a person who is trained to look other people in the eye.

I come from the Lynchs of Sligo. You know, I went there, but I looked in the phone book and there are nine million Lynches in Sligo.

And this, incidentally, is my thumbnail sketch of American marriage: A woman sees a man; she likes him. Now she jumps on this thing and rides it to some kind of standstill. Then she changes it and trains it, and to the exact degree that she's able to do this, she disrespects him.

If you want your freedom, you have to be willing to work hard to exercise it.