I don't ever want to be a sentimentalist. I prefer to be a realist. I'm not a romantic really.

Even during the rationing period, during World War II, we didn't have the anxiety that we'd starve, because we grew our own potatoes, you know? And our own hogs, and our own cows and stuff, you know.

I think the extent to which I have any balance at all, any mental balance, is because of being a farm kid and being raised in those isolated rural areas.

I got out of the Army - in my world - I came to New York, for instance, when the civil rights movement was just beginning, and that created a certain energy, a certain rumble, a certain impetus for black actors.

I knew real show business from my father, who had been an actor since he left the world of boxing.

Don't you try and go through life worried if someone had liked you or not. You best make sure that they are doing right by you.

Once you begin to explain or excuse all events on racial grounds, you begin to indulge in the perilous mythology of race.