I went back and researched the history of gospel; where it came from, slavery times, communicating with each other without their master knowing what they are saying, and that gospel artists view themselves differently.

I’ve been using narcotics for 20 years.

After the advent of the written word, the masses who could not – or were not permitted to – read, were given sermons by the few who could.

No movement can afford to be caught in a time warp and exist in a state of suspended animation.

Yet, that’s what studios do. If one thing works, they’ll keep doing it till it runs its course and people aren’t interested anymore.

Martyrdom was the price of enthusiasm for acting.

Having come to live in this age is as though one were to have entered another country. Learn its language or risk being left out.

You always draw on your experiences with live audiences to know how to do comedy on films. You’re working for a laugh that may or may not come six months later, but you’re working in...

Gospel artists are messengers; they are vessels of a message.

I don’t have a dime left. I am dependent on my friends for food and a small old-age pension.

To portray a maniac offers a compelling challenge.

I prefer to choose which traditions to keep and which to let go.

I’m in the booth and first of all, I’m from Germany and I had never heard a gospel in my life.

If my accent betrayed my foreign birth, it also stamped me as an enemy, in the imagination of the producers.

All too often arrogance accompanies strength, and we must never assume that justice is on the side of the strong. The use of power must always be accompanied by moral choice.

On the stage you’re there, it’s live. There’s a beginning, a middle, an end. When something is funny you hear it right away.

You can be very independent, but admit to wanting somebody close to you and that’s what me and my wife have. We don’t need each other but we want to be with each other and...

My body grew hot, then cold. I tried to eat the bed sheets. My heart beat madly. Every joint in my body ached. When I took the cure they took it all away from me.

I always sang, I always acted, I always played.

You can’t expect the entire world to come to New York to see you. You have to travel to them.

I don’t care if you are religious or not and I think the message is that at the end of the day, everybody has to mature and everybody has to heal and mend their own...

I enjoy my work. I haven’t been an actor for 30 years without getting pleasure out of the profession.

To win a woman, take her with you to see Dracula.

I prefer to make common cause with those whose weapons are guitars, banjos, fiddles and words.

Let’s say black, the whole black religious experience, here, is very impressive to me, because when I first arrived I realized that people carry their faith with so much pride.

If you are not serious, people will sense it.

Although I am deeply grateful to a great many people, I forgo the temptation of naming them for fear that I might slight any by omission.

One might have thought the world would stop ascribing moral equivalence between acts of terrorism and acts of punishing terrorism. It has not happened that way.

The Southern Baptist Church is a specific culture in itself. So, I had to study, talk to people, watch tape and go to performances to see how Gospel artists move compared to secular artists.

People, chained by monotony, afraid to think, clinging to certainties… they live like ants.

I am determined to give the Yiddish language a fighting chance to survive.

You don’t really need modernity in order to exist totally and fully. You need a mixture of modernity and tradition.

I had a record deal early in my life and they offered me the movie, but they said that I had to come in and sing because they needed a singer.

I have lived too completely, I think. I have known every human emotion.

When a film company is in the red they come to me. Always it is the same.

I remain convinced that I can be a true universalist only when I am a better Jew.

Secular artists see themselves with performance; they are more self involved, presentational.

In Hungary acting is a profession. In America it is a decision.

As an artist I have an even more abiding interest in the compact between the Arts and Government.

Right up to the middle of this century all perceptions of the world around us were delivered via the bookshelf or the paper route.

My close-up was magnificent!

The actor depends wholly on himself. He gives his performance in what, to him, seems the most effective manner.

I am filled with awe that filmmakers have the capacity to stir us and give us a sense of wonder. Film, like no other medium, makes a visceral appeal to our humanity.

I had to study acting to basically educate myself.

I have never met a vampire personally, but I don’t know what might happen tomorrow.

Without movie parts I was reduced to freak status. I just couldn’t stand it.

I tried for a while to be an agricultural worker and was hopelessly bored. To me it was meaningless. I would stand around in heaps of manure and sings about the beauty of the work...

Some of the best actors in the world are very exterior actors, Anthony Hopkins being one of them. He knows exactly how to turn his face to get a certain expression. He knows exactly what...

In Hungary, acting is a career for which one fits himself as earnestly as one studies for a degree in medicine, law, or philosophy.

Audiences are audiences.