Any changes that I made to my line, I asked if I could make them, which I do in every movie. So far everybody's been gracious enough to say yes. The only improvising I do is in the movies I do with Chris Guest, which is what we do.

I grew up in the South with guns everywhere and we never shot anyone. This [shooting] is about people who aren't taught the value of life.

I enjoyed being at Jurassic Park, with Jeff Goldblum and Sir Richard Attenborough. It's funny, because Steven Spielberg would actually operate the camera sometimes. He'd consider the camera, and he'd be kind of looking at me. He actually shot a few of the things that I'm in, in that lab, with that long ash dangling off that cigarette. Hogging that fake cigarette. Because I had quit smoking, and he wanted to make sure I didn't go back, so he got me the worst-tasting fake cigarettes ever.

Everything that I've gone through informs me and my opinions in a way, I guess because I am a child of segregation. I lived through it. I lived in it. I was of it.

The [Oregon] Journal in its head and heart will stand for the people, be truly Democratic and free from political entanglements and machinations, believing in the principles that promise the greatest good to the greatest number-to ALL MEN, regardless of race, creed or previous condition of servitude... It will be a fair newspaper, not a dull and selfish sheet.

My ass may be dumb, but I ain't no dumbass.

I like books. I've always got a literature book going. I'd be in there reading, in my off time.