It's fun to see the light in someone's eyes. It's fun to give your own eccentric experience and have it land. That's fun.

Power never turns power down, ever, unless institutionally demanded.

I don't know what its like for most actors, but really clearly for myself acting has always been the fulfillment of personal fantasies. It isn't just art, its about being a person I've always wanted to be, or being in a situation, or being a hero.

In a way, J.F.K. was the high point of the American dream. In order to go to the moon and back, all we did was say we could - and we did.

Theater is completely different from film or television. It has a beginning and a middle and an end and it's different every night. And it's far preferable to any other except in the sense of not getting paid, people who want to eat should do film and television.

I believe that a nation that allows music to be expendable is in danger of becoming expendable itself.

If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a teacher, a history teacher. After all, teaching is very much like performing. A teacher is an actor, in a way. It takes a great deal to get, and hold, a class.