There are two Newman's laws. The first one is "It is useless to put on your brakes when you're upside down." The second is "Just when things look darkest, they go black.

From the very beginning, we bucked tradition. When the experts said that something was "always done" in a certain way, we'd do it our way, which was sometimes the very opposite.

You can't be as old as I am without waking up with a surprised look on your face every morning: 'Holy Christ, whaddya know - I'm still around!' It's absolutely amazing that I survived all the booze and smoking and the cars and the career.

I find it hard to believe that anyone could be so curious about me that they would want to read that I wear underwear shorts with green polka dots on them.

While progress should never come to a halt, there are many places it should never come to at all.

I'd like to be remembered as a guy who tried - who tried to be part of his times, tried to help people communicate with one another, tried to find some decency in his own life, tried to extend himself as a human being. Someone who isn't complacent, who doesn't cop out.

I wanted, I think, to acknowledge Luck: the chance of it, the benevolence of it in my life, and the brutality of it in the lives of others; made especially savage for children because they may not be allowed the good fortune of a lifetime to correct it.