I’ve been fortunate. I don’t pick scripts. Scripts pick me.

Acting is the perfect idiot’s profession.

When one door is closed, don’t you know, another is open.

Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.

Acting is just a process of relaxation, actually. Knowing the text so well and trusting that the instinct and the subconscious mind, whatever you want to call it, is going to take over.

Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.

Poverty must not be a bar to learning and learning must offer an escape from poverty.

You want to do good things, and once you’ve done a couple of good things in a row, you think ‚Well gee, let’s not mess this up.‘ But I am lucky at this point that I have something I really love to do, and it completely holds my attention. I never feel frustrated by it.

I tried acting, liked it, and stuck with it. I saw it as the way I would keep that promise to myself of getting back at those who had made my school life a misery.

I will prepare and some day my chance will come.

One good thing about acting in film is that it’s good therapy.

There is no scarcity of opportunity to make a living at what you love; there’s only scarcity of resolve to make it happen.

I prefer directing to acting. There is huge freedom that comes from being behind the camera. It brings a lot of responsibilities as well but is intensely rewarding.

I would love to sign on to do a movie if it was the right role and if it was the right script, because I would be taking time away from music to tell a big grand story, and spend all of my time and pouring all of my emotions into being someone else. So for me to do that, it would have to be a story worth telling.

I work very hard, but when God opens that door for you – when life opens that door for you, I should say – I think it’s important to be giving, to return the love back.

Each day brings opportunity for decisions for eternity.

You don’t know when you’re being watched. That’s one of the weird things about celebrity. It’s my least favorite part of acting, celebrity.

I was ashamed to admit I was hipped to the idea of acting. That’s why I started in with the props.

Barack knows the American Dream because he’s lived it, and he wants everyone in this country to have that same opportunity, no matter who we are or where we’re from or what we look like or who we love.

The highly functional infrastructure that surrounds us, particularly in the West, is a gift from our ancestors: the comparatively uncorrupt political and economic systems, the technology, the wealth, the lifespan, the freedom, the luxury, and the opportunity.

Why, if someone is good in one field can they not be accepted or given the slightest opportunity to express and be creative in other fields?

Education is not a problem. Education is an opportunity.

Democracy is not static. It is a living force. Every new idea, every new invention offers opportunity for both good and evil.

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

Life’s like a play: it’s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.

The answer to the problem of inequality is for the people who are fortunate enough to either have been gifted or deserved more to do everything they can to make the communities around them as strong as they possibly can.

It’s very rare that you get a director that lets you be creative and bring what you feel your character should do or should be.

You know when you’re young and you see a play in high school, and the guys all have gray in their hair and they’re trying to be old men and they have no idea what that’s like? It’s just that stupid the other way around.

I’ve always felt toward the slightest scene, even if all I had to do in a scene was just to come in and say, ‚Hi,‘ that the people ought to get their money’s worth and that this is an obligation of mine, to give them the best you can get from me.

We have an obligation and a responsibility to be investing in our students and our schools. We must make sure that people who have the grades, the desire and the will, but not the money, can still get the best education possible.

Whatever is on the page is what I’m married to. I’m very prepared. I’m a thespian. I don’t like to improv. I don’t like to go off course ‚cause I think that’s where stuff happens. When you stick to the material ‚cause it’s written so well, that’s where the magic happens.

In my entire life, any time I’ve ever lost something, I’ve gotten something even better going around the next corner. It’s like one door closes and another door opens. As long as I can walk through the produce section in every grocery store in this country and eat the grapes that they’re going to throw away, I know I can be fine.

I’ve found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often.

The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.

Nothing is more expensive than a missed opportunity.

Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.

I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it, so I signed up for acting instead.

Opportunity makes a thief.

God can cause opportunity to find you. He has unexpected blessings where you suddenly meet the right person, or suddenly your health improves, or suddenly you’re able to pay off your house. That’s God shifting things in your favor.

If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.

Fortune is like the market, where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.

There’ll always be serendipity involved in discovery.

What’s important for my daughter to know is that… if you are fortunate to have opportunity, it is your duty to make sure other people have those opportunities as well.

A man must make his opportunity, as oft as find it.

Inside of every problem lies an opportunity.

It pays to know the enemy – not least because at some time you may have the opportunity to turn him into a friend.

I’m not a photographer, so I didn’t get into F-stops or ND filters or background, foreground, cross-light, all that stuff. But I was interested in the camera and the lenses. That’s the world that I’m moving in, in terms of acting and giving a performance.

I’ve done films where we don’t rehearse, and I’ve done films where we heavily rehearse. I like rehearsals.

Most of the time, I’m not even working; I’m just helping people, because I feel that I am too lucky.

I am able to play monsters well. I understand monsters. I understand madmen.

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

When written in Chinese, the word ‚crisis‘ is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.

Wealthy men can’t live in an island that is encircled by poverty. We all breathe the same air. We must give a chance to everyone, at least a basic chance.

See, ‚A Time to Kill‘ was the one I got famous off of. Big ka-boom, over one weekend. After that, I did films that I really wanted to do.

One is lucky to be born in a place where no one is doing it, because then you can say, ‚Well, obviously I can write better than everyone else in high school.‘ You have no idea of the competition.

I want to try something different in Hollywood, to tell the audience I am not just an actor star – I am an actor, too.

If you win two games, one game or three games, you can still say it’s luck. But when you win a championship over 18 games, it’s not luck.

I play a nobody in Japan.

Acting is happy agony.

I thank Marc Jacobs so much for giving me the opportunity to design a shoe for Louis Vuitton, but the thing that broke my heart most was when they said, ‚You’re finished. The shoe’s finished.‘