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

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

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.

In our resolve to build a better world... we seek to summon what Abraham Lincoln called the better angels of our nature.

I do not know if it is true that all actors want to direct and all directors want to act, but in 1972 I tried directing and decided I had better stick to acting.

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