I don't take success very well, because I know it's fleeting. And the next day, it can all fall apart. I know that, too. So I don't get too high, and I don't get too low. You get through the world a lot easier that way.

You put on a face for the public. The face isn't false it's just another side of you. If it were false, you couldn't last. People want something real and natural, and if they catch you acting, you're dead. It has to look real. In order to look real, it has to be real, and I've always thought of the characters I've played as real people.

You don't need qualifications as an actor or a politician. And I didn't want to be a politician.

Acting is just common sense. It isn't hard if you put yourself aside and just do what the writer wrote.

We know what the surface of the moon is better than we know what the surface of the sea floor is.

Everybody wants blockbusters. I like to see a few pictures now and then that have to do with people and have relationships, and that's what I want to do films about. I don't want to see these sci-fi movies, and I don't want to do one of those. I don't understand it.

I'm a 'bleeding-heart liberal,' one of those card-carrying Democrats that Rush Limbaugh thinks is a communist. And I'm proud of it.

Too many actors have run for office. There's one difference between me and them: I know I'm not qualified.

When I started working, I didn't have a clue what I was doing, in that I was just wandering around, hoping that I could succeed. Then after I got a little under my belt, it took me about 25 years to feel like I knew what I was doing.

I saw my wife at a pool, flipped over her, and 14 days later we were married.

I don't want to know what's good, or bad, or true. I let God worry about the truth. I just want to know the momentary fact about things. Life isn't good, or bad, or true. It's merely factual, it's sensual, it's alive. My idea of living sensual facts are you, a home, a country, a world, a universe, in that order.

I'm a Methodist, but not as an actor.

With the exception of my wife and children, there's nothing I value more than my Oklahoma heritage.