A lot of times, scripts are written so the character is all one way. Even with 'Bringing Out the Dead,' the character was written a little more generic.

I don't know if I hadn't grown up poor, and in the neighborhood I did, if I would have had that much to bring to my art form. I call upon my past with characters.

In this industry, very few actors can control their career.

There could be some unknown actor who's a better actor than Ving Rhames, but no one knows that actor, so Ving Rhames will get the job.

For millions of men and women, the church has been the hospital for the soul, the school for the mind and the safe depository for moral ideas.

There were times, especially when I was traveling for 'Eat, Pray, Love,' when, I swear to God, I would feel this weight of my female ancestors, all those Swedish farmwives from beyond the grave who were like, 'Go! Go to Naples! Eat more pizza! Go to India, ride an elephant! Do it! Swim in the Indian Ocean. Read those books. Learn a language.'

Every child matters. If we fail our children, we are bound to fail our present, our future, faith, cultures, and civilisations as well.

Creation stories, so central in the religions of the Middle East, play a surprisingly marginal part in Greek myth. The Greeks had nothing to set alongside the resounding 'In the beginning' in the book of Genesis, where one eternal God creates the universe out of nothing.