When somebody tells you they’re not very smart, they’re saying exactly the opposite.

As the actor, you can’t go in saying, ‘I’m the bad guy.’ You’ve got to think your reasons for doing what you’re doing are good.

At the Superdome, a young man came up to me holding a baby. He’d run out of diapers. He’d run out of medicine. His baby was sick. The guy’s saying, ‘Help me! Take my baby.’ What could I do? That’s the definition of helpless.

I’ve never met or spoken to David Lee Roth, yet it’s rather ironic that even he’s saying Eddie’s lying about things. I’m saying he’s not telling the truth, yet Eddie insists that the two of us are lying! You be the judge.

I knew I had to write a good screenplay to be taken seriously, and I knew I needed to present Mississippi on visuals instead of just saying, ‘Hey I wanted to film it in Mississippi.’ It would seem like it was a hometown boy just wanting to be home.

I don’t want what I am saying to sound like a prophecy or anything like an analysis of modern society… these are only feelings I have, and I am the least speculative man on earth.

Saying that all documentaries are the same is like saying all foreign films are the same.

There are two ways to wake up. You can wake up thinking about what you know, or you wake up thinking and saying ‘What can I learn?.’ That’s a very different approach.

After saying yes to Turkey, the EU is having difficulty finding clear and consistent grounds for saying no to other, still more remote candidates – but being in the general vicinity of Europe does seem to be a continuing requirement.

If I feel like doing something, I do it. If I feel like saying something, I say it. If I feel like dancing, I do. If I don’t, I don’t.

I like to find music that shares a rhythm with the sentences I’m working on. And though I’ll probably regret saying this, I think some songs actually don’t sound too bad when they’re played through lousy speakers.

When you’re expected to win and you have the press saying that you are going to win the Olympic gold medal, and you’re the only sure thing in the Olympics, it can undermine your confidence.

When you say ‘I want to be an inspiring leader,’ the operative phrase is ‘I want.’ This is inherently me-centered and self serving whether or not you recognise it. What you are really saying is ‘I want to get people to do what I would like them to.’ Perhaps they don’t want to do that....

Well, I’m not saying that an emissions tax is ever going to be good policy.

Finally, we entered Chetaube County, my imaginary birthplace, where the names of the little winding roads and minuscule mountain communities never failed to inspire me: Yardscrabble, Big Log, Upper, Middle and Lower Pigsty, Chicken Scratch, Cooterville, Felchville, Dust Rag, Dough Bag, Uranus Ridge, Big Bottom, Hooter Holler, Quickskillet, Buck Wallow, Possum Strut … We always...

I can say, and I am responsible for what I am saying, that they have started to commit suicide under the walls of Baghdad. We will encourage them to commit more suicides quickly.

Canada – they won’t like me saying this, but it’s really like it’s a part of Michigan, that area.

I remember saying to the chairman after serving the first year, ‘Why are we doing this? Why don’t the Hawaiians have control?’ ‘Well, we have no mechanism to do it,’ I was told.

I’m an extremist so I’m either hated or loved. I think it’s down to when I first got to Formula One not always knowing what I was saying, saying things that mean one thing but people were taking the other way and then people don’t forget.

No one was jumping up and saying, ‘Yeah, let me give you money.’ I had never held a camera in my hand – a home video camera, nothing. I had not directed.

I hadn’t even watched ’24’ before, and the audition was kind of far away. When I got the material, there wasn’t a character yet, so it almost seemed like an assistant to Jack Bauer saying, ‘Yes, sir. No, sir.’

Listening is more important than talking. Just hit your mark and believe what you say. Just listen to people and react to what they are saying.

I’m saying, Come on, the global warming thing? How did the ice melt during the ice ages? Was the dinosaurs driving SUVs around back then?

I think when you’re doing something cutting edge like ‘The Matrix,’ it might mean when everybody’s saying ‘no’ that you’re really on the right track.

I don’t necessarily want to know what people are saying when I’m not around, especially if it’s about me. I just don’t need to hear extra garbage.

A witer’s mind is NEVER silent. It is always conducting the next symphony of words.

No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.

‘The Machinist’ changed me. I learned that I really enjoy, literally, not saying a damned word for days at a time, except for what was in the scene. Whole days of… nothing. Just… standing still. I know a lot of people found it bizarre, because they’d be standing right next to me thinking, ‘Why aren’t...

Many people have been pontificating, and patronizing, and moralizing, and scapegoating, saying you Greeks, you are the problem. I would say we Greeks have a problem. We are not the problem.

I’m used to being surrounded by really smart 22-year-old students who have no problem saying that something I suggested is not a very good idea.

When you have energy companies like Shell and British Petroleum, both of which are perhaps represented in this room, saying there is a problem with excess carbon dioxide emission, I think we ought to listen.

I’m just saying that at least for the foreseeable future there won’t be any more touring.

Sometimes one creates a dynamic impression by saying something, and sometimes one creates as significant an impression by remaining silent.

I regret things all the time. I’ve never regretted not saying something. I’ve only regretted saying something.

Nixon, who spent much of his career attacking the press and saying he was a victim of the press, was in fact created by the press, in this case the L.A. Times.

I was only saying to the Queen the other day how I hate name dropping.

You could get a cheer by saying: ‘Let’s withdraw from Afghanistan’, but I don’t think that’s where the public’s at. It wouldn’t be responsible.

Knowing the truth is so minuscule compared to having the nerve to say it…and even more to live it.

I come from a very critical culture. You know the Scots. They’re always saying: ‘Oh, no. It will never work. You’ll never amount to anything. You’ve got to know your place in the world.’

Silicon Valley is constantly saying that the government is irrelevant and powerless. But that’s because most people there have never seen it get serious.

I was so afraid of upsetting people, and not being liked for saying something that was not to everyone’s taste.

So much of a professional athlete’s success depends upon not necessarily the play itself but how he deals with… always saying how you deal with good, is just as important as how you deal with bad.

Say yes to life and life will say yes to you!

All I can say is that you only realize how big your mountain is once you’re laying motionless, helpless, and hopeless in the valley below. No one goes there on purpose, if you get what I’m saying, because the only way to find your personal low is to slip and roll down that mountain of...

When I was off TV, people would ask me to please come back, which I think was their way of saying, ‘There’s nothing out there for us.’

I really think that everybody would like to be an actor. Why wouldn’t they? It’s great work if you can get it. The one thing that prevents most people from saying, ‘I’m just gonna go to Hollywood!’ is that it seems unrealistic.

So, we’re saying, if we can give developers and builders incentives to cut down on the regulatory barriers that are faced in this country, then we might be able to address the needs of affordable housing.

People in Sweden are very conscious of what people are saying about you.

There’s a saying, ‘It’s easy to write songs, but very difficult to write great songs.’ I’m going through that right now.

The lead singer for Deerhunter, Bradford Cox… I don’t like saying people are geniuses or whatever, but I just think that dude is so good at every single thing he does. He stays within his genre, but I think he does so well experimenting with stuff.