I've always boxed a certain way. But with Rocky, the character himself had to be kind of awkward. So I had to learn to fight that way.

I wanted to show I had balls at age 60. Just because society says I'm old, doesn't mean that I am. I'm pursuing happiness, even if it makes the people around me unhappy.

A lot of actors, and artists in general, never feel secure in love. They always feel everything's going to be taken away from them, professionally and personally; they're extremely emotional and volatile.

There is an age-old proverb that really does hold true in every area of life - in relations between nations and right down to the most subtle and sophisticated or must unstable and unsophisticated relations between lovers - and it is this: they took "kindness" for "weakness."

When boxers are in the ring, they're simple. It's when the fight is over, that's when the other fight, the real fight, begins. That's the problem.

I was on cruise control from '85 to '95, and it was my fault. There were a lot of self-inflicted wounds, when I was not doing any original material. I wasn't directing. I wasn't writing. That's not who I am.

Training and working in Philadelphia is a very unusual situation because that city does believe that Rocky is real. No one calls me Sylvester, it's Rocky.