I ain't never been in no college with famous people. I was a drifter for a while. I just was desperate to fit in with a group. Really, I was swimming. I was lost, treading water, trying to find my way. I wanted to play football. It didn't work out. I didn't really know what I wanted until I found acting in a theater department, and then everything just fell into place, and I had a passion about something. Then, I started living my life.

Social Security's future has gotten worse, and each year we delay reform adds to the cost we are pushing off onto our children.

People in Medicaid ought to have access to the same insurance as the rest of the population. If they are segregated, it will be a poor plan for poor people.

[In my pre-success years] there was a constant hunger, measuring myself against other actors, and there was sometimes fear. But, there was always a need for self-improvement, to help with the struggle to make myself a better actor.

Relax. Just relax and have fun doing what you're doing. Don't worry so much about being results oriented. Just commit yourself to the moment.

Read, read, read, read, read. Read everything. You can’t work unless you know the world, and outside of living in the world the best way to learn about the world is to read about it.

If I could put my finger on it, I'd bottle it and sell it. I came down here originally in 1972 with some drunken fraternity guys and had never seen anything like it - the climate, the smells. It's the cradle of music; it just flipped me. Someone suggested that there's an incomplete part of our chromosomes that gets repaired or found when we hit New Orleans. Some of us just belong here.