When you work for something, you appreciate it more. So what are y'all going to do with all the opportunities you inherited that you didn't have to work for?

My personal assessment is that Dr. King is the greatest American we have ever produced. I can argue for Lincoln, I can argue for FDR, but for my money, King is the greatest American we have ever produced. His only weapon was love. He transforms a nation, transforms the world with one weapon and that of course being again the weapon of love. So that for me, King is the quintessential example of everything that I could ever want to be in my lifetime.

I love my cross-sectioned, cross-cultural audience. Some of them are doing better than the average guy, but my audience has always been people who are struggling to stay in the middle class.

I still think in this country, and this might surprise you, the one thing that George Bush said as president that I do agree with, I love that phrase, "the soft bigotry of low expectations."

When I'm at the premiere and I see the film in its entirety, I forget plot, I forget the story, I forget what my character goes through, because I really do just let it go.

I can't count the number of people I've talked to over the course of my career who have said to me that the thing that they most regret is the one time they did something just for the money.

If you don't have courage, you can't practice any of the other virtues.