I started out as an actor, but I forced myself to be a writer, even though I wasn't very good at it and had never written. I don't think I ever passed an English course in my life. My first eight to 10 scripts were pretty horrendous, but I stayed at it, stayed at it, and stayed at it, until I eventually found a voice and a subject like Rocky that people were interested in.

When you're younger you just want to go out and make your mark in the world and doing that, quite often, the people that you love the most and the people you should be closest to suffer from estrangement. I'd be gone nine months a year, so how do you know anyone? When you come home you are a stranger.

A lot of time people are like, "oh my God, you're stereotyped." Good, then you're known for something.

Study people's success stories hard. Study their failures even harder.

You have to grab life by the throat and squeeze before it grabs you by your neck and breaks it. Own your destiny.

When life hits you pretty hard, you can go into a dark corner.

The only thing that I haven't done is perform brain surgery on myself. I've been very, very lucky. I've spared Shakespeare undue stress by not doing that.