The greatest evil which fortune can inflict on men is to endow them with small talents and great ambition.

You must rouse into people's consciousness their own prudence and strength, if you want to raise their character.

Men sometimes feel injured by praise because it assigns a limit to their merit; few people are modest enough not to take offense that one appreciates them.

Lazy people are always anxious to be doing something.

As an actor, some of the most fun days I've had on set have involved shooting blanks all day - or better yet, on a micro-budget indie shoot in Texas, shooting live ammo. I feel guilty admitting this, but make-believe beating a man half to death for nine hours can also be strangely satisfying and, dare I say, good fun.

The biggest problem is the funerals that don't exist. People call the funeral home, they pick up the body, they mail the ashes to you, no grief, no happiness, no remembrance, no nothing. That happens more often than it doesn't in the United States.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

Grief is a very complicated monster. There's no real exorcising of it. It has a different form every day.