I wish my daughters would box. I'm so worried about the guys coming up to them. I would love them to be able to smack a guy right off a bar stool.

It's great the way the old-time directors used to manipulate the hell out of you. You see someone dying and all of a sudden a ghost would come out and they go walking hand in hand up the stairway.

I think that's become passe, but if you can surround yourself with a kind of monument to yourself and your family - a statement - and you can afford it, then that's a noble project.

The idea that boxing lends itself to cinema so well is because it's usually a morality play - good against evil, insecurity and triumph, fear strikes out, so the audience can really get drawn into the drama of it. Also, it was sensual and very primal. I think subliminaly we do two things - life is a fight, life is a struggle and we understand that from our early, early, early ancestors, and life is a race.

If I'd succeeded right away at acting I wouldn't have sought out writing.

If you come into my house, I'm going to fight much more viciously to get you out than if we were on a neutral piece of land.

I love being verbal in films.