Every time I try to retire, or even think of retiring from acting, my agent comes up with a script.

I like policy. It’s why I decided to enter government. The other thing I like about government – you have good days, you have bad days, but you never have a boring day, and that’s important to me.

People want to go out and travel around and meet cool people. I could just go live in Vermont, but is that what I really want?

Solutions are not the answer.

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

Most people who ask for advice from others have already resolved to act as it pleases them.

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.

Michelle Pfeiffer hasn’t been finding a lot of work recently because she doesn’t like what a woman her age is offered. That’s a real double standard. You get Sean Connery, who gets older and older, still playing opposite young ladies, but it doesn’t work the other way around.

Let every eye negotiate for itself and trust no agent.

I have a lot of friends who do what I do. Either they’re actresses or singers or things like that.

My authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems and to be accused of being ultraconservative. I have never been a right-winger. It was my authoritarian way of making decisions that created problems.

I will never turn Medicare into a voucher. No American should ever have to spend their golden years at the mercy of insurance companies. They should retire with the care and dignity they have earned.

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.

The problem with car dealerships is you’ve already decided what you want to buy before you even go there, and you’re really just going there to talk through some annoying negotiation.

I have been trying to retire to the back of the camera for quite a few years, and in 1970, when I first started directing, I said, ‚If I could pull this off, I can some day move to the back of the camera and stay there.‘

I probably would have retired years ago if I hadn’t found interesting things to do.

A lot of people have said I’d have probably done better in my career if I hadn’t looked so cheap and gaudy. But I dress to be comfortable for me, and you shouldn’t be blamed because you want to look pretty.

I don’t really get into a big intellectual analysis of why I am going to do a certain script or not.

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.

I think women want to take care of themselves, and I think having a voice in how that is done is very important.

I don’t have a magic formula for prioritizing the world’s problems.

A good name is rather to be chosen than riches.

He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.

If you’re a quarterback, you want everything on your shoulders. You want to be the one to make the decisions.

My role 14 years ago in Richard III – that was the first time I played a bad guy and learned a lot about it – they have all the fun!

Eight years involved with the nuclear industry have taught me that when nothing can possible go wrong and every avenue has been covered, then is the time to buy a house on the next continent.

Would I swap what I have achieved as a cook if I could have been as successful as a footballer? Definitely.

I play a nobody in Japan.

There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.

‚This guy’s a clown! He’s just all talk!‘ I’ve heard that many times in my career. And then they’re sleeping in the middle of the octagon.

I’ll be judged on the body of work and not the popularity of any one decision.

I don’t have a vast longing for the stage.

I had a lot of success from the start. I never really was tested for long periods of time. I got my first professional job while I was a senior in college. I signed with the William Morris Agency before I graduated.

If I don’t run for president, we’ll all be OK.

I will never retire unless I have to.

In every movie I do have a dialogue.

It’s so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.

There are a whole bunch of roles where people say, ‚Oh, you’re playing yourself.‘ I guess it’s kind of a compliment. Or people say, ‚Oh, man, you just roll out of bed and do that.‘ The work is to make it look effortless. That’s the hard part.

I like to work.

I’m not much of a math and science guy. I spent most of my time in school daydreaming and managed to turn it into a living.

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey ‚people.‘ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war… Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.

The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That’s the time to listen to every fear you can imagine! When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead!

When I started out, I didn’t have any desire to be an actress or to learn how to act. I just wanted to be famous.

I like talking. I like acting.

Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.

There’s something boring about people who have to go to an office for a living.

I did go to Wellesley, a women’s college. And I am of a kind of strange generation which is transitional in terms of women who wanted to go out and get jobs.

‚Tis better to bear the ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.

To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions.

It doesn’t matter if you want to be a teacher, an astronaut, or a reggaeton singer, you need to study.

Playing big, heroic characters with heart is always a lot of fun. I enjoy making movies like that, and a lot of people love to live vicariously through those characters.

Dakota Fanning is a child, but she is a wonderful actor. I don’t know what a child actor is. She’s an actor who’s a child.

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottage princes‘ palaces.

It’s extremely difficult to get these jobs because you can’t get a job on a ship unless you have seaman’s paper’s, and you can’t get seaman’s papers unless you have a job on a ship. There had to be a way to break through the circle, and he was the one who arranged it for me.

I said on the equality side of it, that it is essential to a woman’s equality with man that she be the decision-maker, that her choice be controlling.

Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worse kind of suffering.

Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf; is better than a whole loaf.