On ‚Grey’s Anatomy‘ I wouldn’t care what I was playing – I would play a corpse, ‚cause I love it that much. It is deep true love, and it will never die.

By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.

I like to hide behind the characters I play. Despite the public perception, I am a very private person who has a hard time with the fame thing.

Since day one, since the first time I touched the pen, I wanted to be the best at what I do.

Democracy is our commitment. It is our great legacy, a legacy we simply cannot compromise. Democracy is in our DNA.

On life’s vast ocean diversely we sail. Reasons the card, but passion the gale.

Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.

It’s one of the few regrets of my presidency – that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better. There’s no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide, and I guarantee I’ll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office.

It’s never crowded along the extra mile.

Unwearied ceaseless effort is the price that must be paid for turning faith into a rich infallible experience.

My favorite movies of all times is ‚Doctor Zhivago,‘ and I love ‚Gone With the Wind.‘ I’d love to play some Southern belle or something where I owned a plantation.

I’d go from film to film and almost detach from one world and jump in another. I was living as these people and not having a self. I didn’t know who I was. And things just get really dark.

When you’re one of the leaders of the team, there are no days off.

I never wanted to be a scientist per se. I wanted to be a naturalist.

I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.

Surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves, those who work hard and play hard.

The book of female logic is blotted all over with tears, and Justice in their courts is forever in a passion.

I’m not a fast thinker, but once I am interested in something, I am doing it for many years.

Acting is just a way of making a living, the family is life.

Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.

To do anything to a high level, it has to be total obsession.

A lot of people like to do certain things, but they’re not that good at it. Keep going through the things that you like to do, until you find something that you actually seem to be extremely good at. It can be anything.

I always tell audiences when I talk about writing: Writing isn’t something I do; writing is something that I am. I am writing – it’s just an expression of me.

There is something about building up a comradeship – that I still believe is the greatest of all feats – and sharing in the dangers with your company of peers. It’s the intense effort, the giving of everything you’ve got. It’s really a very pleasant sensation.

Those who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit; for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry – writing at writing.

I’m proud to be an actor. See, as an actor, you live longer. Football players, the brain and all that stuff, ooh-eee, that’s not good.

I’ve made money, and I’ve been ripped off. I’ve had creative freedom, and I’ve been pressured to make hits. I have dealt with diva behavior from crazy musicians, and I have seen genius records by wonderful artists get completely ignored. I love music. I always will.

I do some kind of work, whether writing or painting or recording, on a daily basis. And it’s so essential that when I’m involved in the actual process, my so-called ‚real life‘ becomes almost incidental, which becomes worrying.

I’m sure that at no point in my life could I ever have shown the kind of focus and discipline and commitment necessary to work a station at elBulli or Le Bernardin. No. That ain’t me.

I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.

The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.

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.

It’s in my blood to be around people while I was training.

Acting is a nice childish profession – pretending you’re someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself.

What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it.

I’m not a real movie star. I’ve still got the same wife I started out with twenty-eight years ago.

You always want to quit while you are ahead. You don’t want to be like a fighter who stays too long in the ring until you’re not performing at your best.

Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.

It’s much more fun to play something you’re nothing like than what you are… It’s much easier to hide yourself in a character.

I have to work really hard to get the record deal – I have to spend years at it to get good. I have to practice to be good at guitar.

I can get where some scientists would say comedians are crazy. What you have to understand: A lot of comedians are dealing with a dark passion. A lot of these are guys coming from a tumultuous life, including myself. Some people need outlets, a way to express yourself.

I will never retire from politics, the revolution, or the ideas I have.

I just was never into performing. It’s just hard work. It’s hard work.

The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses – behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.

I’m in awe of the universe, but I don’t necessarily believe there’s an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance. The incense is powerful and provocative, whether Buddhist or Catholic.

The true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.

Being a stand-up is my mission in life; it’s my passion. My ongoing goal is to simply be funny, on my own, in front of a roomful of strangers.

The design of the Mac wasn’t what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it’s all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it.

A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.

As a soccer player, I wanted an FA Cup winner’s medal. As an actor you want an Oscar. As a chef it’s three-Michelin’s stars, there’s no greater than that. So pushing yourself to the extreme creates a lot of pressure and a lot of excitement, and more importantly, it shows on the plate.

Commit yourself to a mighty purpose.

There weren’t a lot of career opportunities in crazy-fast hardcore punk, so you didn’t have a lot of ambition, just the love and passion to play music with your friends.

To be honest, I never really considered myself to be too much of an actress. So, whenever I get the chance to do music, I’m always, like, just in it. It’s like, ‚Oh my God, I finally get to do this. I’m so happy.‘

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.

The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was ‚Crime and Punishment‘. I put the thing down after reading it in a fever over two or three days… I said, ‚If this is what a book can be, then that is what I want to do.‘

I don’t know who I would have been if I never watched MotoGP.

The joy of doing well as a batsman for your country is much more than that little joy of going for a party and enjoying music. It is a completely different high, and I get high by performances. That’s what I enjoy now.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

I just think people have a lot of fiction. But, you know, I mean, the real story of Facebook is just that we’ve worked so hard for all this time. I mean, the real story is actually probably pretty boring, right? I mean, we just sat at our computers for six years and coded.