I wrote those poems for myself, as a way of being a soldier here in this country. I didn't know the poems would travel. I didn't go to Lebanon until two years ago, but people told me that many Arabs had memorized these poems and translated them into Arabic.

Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers.

Men have always detested women's gossip because they suspect the truth: their measurements are being taken and compared.

No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool. Writers, alas, have to be fools in public, while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.

Mr. Vice President, the most fiscally conservative thing this government has ever done, is to invest massively in the green part of the recovery. Because those green dollars are the hardest working dollars in the history of American politics. That same dollar that is being used to cut energy bills, is also cutting global warming gas emissions, is also cutting unemployment, is also cutting poverty, through retrofits it's also raising the value of homes, is also by cleaning the air, cutting asthma rates.

This is the time that I really miss being in my courtroom because I believe that that's the last place in this country where there's supposed to be fairness.

A lot of women say they love being pregnant, but I wasn't such a big fan.

Well, I think that there is a connection between being a lawyer and a doctor and an actor. They kind of, in some ways, have the same appeal, I suppose.

I would like to feel that I have a range and that it's not just a matter of being a comic actor or a serious actor, because those are really artificial classifications, I think.

Am I being typecast as a horrible person? I don't know. I don't think so. But if it happens, I'd rather get to play that, because there's nothing fun about being sweet. Sweet can be so boring, so I'd be happy staying away from that.

I happened to happened to land in a time, in the middle '60s, that without knowing it, and without being told by the history of theater - which we now see from a historical point of view was an explosive time.

And nothing embittered me, which is important, because I think ethnic people and women in this society can end up being embittered because of the lack of affirmative action, you know.

I think the extent to which I have any balance at all, any mental balance, is because of being a farm kid and being raised in those isolated rural areas.

So in my sophomore year, I took a senior anatomy class. I thought anatomy - being the thing that I should be most interested in - and if I could hack, as we called it, a senior class, I would continue. I didn't hack the senior class.

You don't build a bond without being present.