"I've tried writing. Two days later I'd go visit it and say, Jesus Christ, who wrote this crap?"

"Usually you're in movies with a lot of dissolves and things, but this was kind of quick, more jarring than usual. I thought it would be fun to be in a movie that's unconventional. Then I met Guy and I liked him. I think he's a good man."

"I don't like to be talked into anything. I don't want to be cajoled."

"When I was a kid going to the movies, we'd go because Bogart was in the movie, or Cagney, or John Wayne. We didn't know what the story was about or anything."

"Faulkner turned out to be a great teacher. When a student asked a question ineptly, he answered the question with what the student had really wanted to know."

"Just as radical heirs apparent are said to lay aside all inconvenient revolutionary opinions when they come to the throne, it was believed that Mr. Mill in Parliament would be an entirely different person from Mr. Mill in his study."

"School divides life into two segments, which are increasingly of comparable length. As much as anything else, schooling implies custodial care for persons who are declared undesirable elsewhere by the simple fact that a school has been built to serve them."

"I saw as a teacher how, if you take that spark of learning that those children have, and you ignite it, you can take a child from any background to a lifetime of creativity and accomplishment."