Quotes

The Hollywood roles I did were boring; I was soon fed up with them. It's true they gave me a worldwide reputation I could trade on, but they also typed me as a one-dimensional, non-serious actor.

[on Being There (1979)] So much of what I had been thinking about in the recent past led me straight to that make-believe movie death scene. When it was completed, the sound stage full of people, perhaps forty or more, burst into emotional applause. I was startled. Hal [director Hal Ashby] told me later that I had made a little clicking sound in my throat, a "death rattle", which everyone "knew", whether they had heard such a sound or not. Was I playing my own death, the death that is in me, in spite of myself? Could be.

[on his Jewish background] I did not learn about the non-Christian part of my heritage until my early teens. This had its own very special effect.

Your word is your bond.

[on his aunts] I admired them unstintingly and modeled myself on them to some extent, I think - and they in turn came to treat me like a son.

Don't make excuses and don't talk about it. Do it.