Many people continue to think of sharks as man-eating beasts. Sharks are enormously powerful and wild creatures, but you’re more likely to be killed by your kitchen toaster than a shark!

I’m from L.A. I’m an actor. I’m a flake.

One of the hardest things for me to do is watch myself. The first time I see it, I am obsessed with my left ear or my right ear or some other physical attribute, or...

One of the ingredients that made Cheers work so well was the great ensemble of actors we had. That’s the case with any good series.

When you have brothers, you learn to be fiercely competitive with someone you love so they won’t kill you and you won’t kill them.

You have to be an optimist, right? You have to be critical, then you have to be an optimist. Or else you’re really stupid.

I moved into this neighborhood, and I was walking on this beach with my kids, and we came across a sign that said, ‘Water’s polluted, no swimming.’ And I didn’t have any answers.

The industrial way we fish for seafood is harming the marine habitats that all ocean life depends upon. Indiscriminate commercial fishing practices that include miles of driftnets, long lines with thousands of lethal hooks and...

My father went to work every day, and it’s my job to go to work, too. Some days will be good, some won’t be so good, but I have to go to work.

The pressure isn’t on my brain, but on my mouth. I realized Sam Malone said very little, he spoke in little sentences. Which is much more comfortable for me for some reason.

When people are in the midst of really heavy stuff and still have a sense of humor, I admire that.

I tell you, the difference for me is between being victimized, terrorized, numbed by reading about different disasters, or reducing the anxiety by getting up and doing something about it, at whatever level.

A friend is someone who will allow me to be a really bad friend and not hold it against me.

I think the struggle, whenever you make a film or television movie based on a real person’s life, is finding a dramatic arc that will hold an audience’s attention.

You use and lose a lot of energy being grumpy.

My job playing Sam Malone was to let the audience in, to love my bar full of people. And that informed my life.

We need to start looking at having a way of managing the whole ecosystem, because you can’t pick away at it piece by piece, you have to truly start being coordinated and managing our resources...

I think there are probably a handful of real character actors in this business. The rest of us are recycling. So now I’m Sam Malone the editor. I’m Sam Malone the billionaire.

I feel very strongly that you can’t just beat people up anymore; you have to work hand in hand and find ways to compromise, and get big business involved, because it won’t happen otherwise.

How much do you engage yourself in what’s truly real and important in life? That’s the individual question.

I used to have a little silent prayer: ‘Dear God, let my ability to get work be the same as my celebrity.’ That would be a hard burden: to be a household name and not...

Cloning, wow. Who would have thought? There should be a list of people who can and cannot clone themselves.

My joints hurt. I’m slower. But I remember what it was like to run and play with the boys. I want to be one of the boys.

We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel; for any environmental organization to claim sole responsibility for any kind of victory is insane, because everybody attacks these problems as a group.

One person goes off and works in Houston the other person goes off to London and you’re on the phone to each other and somebody is paying you to kiss somebody else. It’s very bizarre...

I think it’s the actor’s job – when you think of being typecast or getting out of the shadow of whatever you’ve had success in – it’s up to you as an actor. The industry...

Humor can bring people under the tent. And a good joke can deflect some of the intensity surrounding a serious subject.

I was at our beautiful home in Martha’s Vineyard, near Boston, sitting on the porch looking at the ocean when I got a phone called and was asked, ‘Would I like to do ‘CSI’?’ A...

If you actively do something, it will stop making you feel like a victim and you’ll start feeling like part of the solution, which is just a huge benefit to your body and your psyche.

My lessons didn’t come at my father’s knee. Like all good lessons, they were learned from example.

You have to work with the auto industry, the oil companies, you have to work to develop renewable fuel, whether it’s solar or different kinds of fuel or whatever.

We have a project with Unocal here in Los Angeles, where we as an environmental organization, the oil company, and the state all get together to promote the recycling of used motor oil.

My temperament is not the adventuresome sort that enjoys starting new projects every six months. I love ensemble, nine-to-five stability. There’s a family dynamic in making a television show that you don’t get on a...

I am a bit of a Pollyanna – I spend most of my day happy.

I was three. My father in jest said that he’d tell the doctor to give me a shot if I didn’t behave. Good heavens, I have a mental picture of the living room and the...

Years ago, we all talked about recycling and not dumping things down your drain and all of that, but talking doesn’t help much. Basically, it’s going to have to be legislation because the impact is...

My reward in life for growing up a little bit was that Mary Steenburgen came into my life, and we have been together for 19 years.

You reach a certain age, and you realize, ‘Wow: there are younger people doing this better than I can, and don’t leave me out – I don’t want to be left behind. I want to...

To be successful, you have to be willing to be successful. You have to believe in the law of attraction – that you create your own life.

We are all in this together. We will all make it or none of us will make it. If everyone cleans up their act except one big ole country, it isn’t going to work.

I eat less, stretch, and work out.

I’m almost tempted, when I’m playing a real person, not to meet them. Afterwards, maybe. But, the job is the same. You still have to show up on screen and be alive and real and...

‘Cheers’ was great. They paired me up with Shelley Long on this tiny bar set for the final audition. That was my first really big one, and we just clicked instantly – I still think...

Sharks are in real trouble, and they need all the help they can get.

You should always carry string, according to my archaeologist father, because then you could at least make a trap to catch animals to survive. According to my grandmother, it was clean underwear.

Centuries-old habitats such as coral gardens are destroyed in an instant by bottom trawls, pulverized by weighted nets into barren plains. And global carbon dioxide emissions from human activity affect the ocean, changing the pH...

Everything I am, everything I’ve been allowed to do, career-wise, has come out of the opportunity I had with ‘Cheers’. I think it’s one of the funniest shows ever. They are some of my best...

I feel like I enjoy the company of Whoopi deeply, and my private life is my private life.

I’m basically a know-it-all, and I’m writing a book about it. I want it to be called ‘Danson on Water’ and have me on the cover in this Christlike pose, standing on the water.

I became interested in ocean issues in the 1980s when I couldn’t take my daughters swimming because of pollution at our local beach. Twenty-five years later, I’m a board member of Oceana, the world’s largest...