Now, if you know what you’re worth, then go out and get what you’re worth.
Love is absolute loyalty. People fade, looks fade, but the loyalty never fades.
Age is a state of old mind. It gets to a point where if you get old enough, you forget how old you are, and that’s the best thing. And then you walk around kind of like in a fog.
I’m the Hiroshima of love.
I feel that America is like a child that grew up so strong and so fast and so tall that it became self-conscious about its size and started to stoop over so as not to offend anyone.
The man who can best gets along with women, is the man who can get along without them.
The action movies changed radically when it became possible to Velcro your muscles on. It was the beginning of a new era. The visual took over. The special effects became more important than the single person. That was the beginning of the end.
The biggest and most interesting crisis in the world is the human crisis, and it never gets boring. It goes back to Shakespeare. You don’t need a gimmick; it’s just man against man and their intolerance of each other.
I’ve always said that the artist dies twice. And the first death is the hardest which is the career death, the creative death. The physical death is an inevitability.
The phenomenal thing that happened to me is that I was able to create two memorable men: one is the ultimate optimist, Rocky, and then you have Rambo, the ultimate pessimist. You’re going to always be remembered for them, no matter what you do.
The trouble with remakes is that people fall in love with the original. It’s like peanut butter. If you try to change the taste of peanut butter, you’re in trouble.
What I’m trying to do now in my life – not just with the building, but with everything – is to construct things that will have enduring qualities, and won’t just be ephemeral flashes in the pan.
When I saw ‘Hercules,’ my mind just exploded because I was extremely thin; I was insecure. I literally ran out of the theatre and started lifting things, anything I could think of – milk crates. I’m still lifting things. It changed my life.
When I tried to branch out into comedy, I didn’t do very well at it, so I went back to doing what I do naturally well, or what the audience expects from me – action pictures.
When I was a kid, my mother used to feed me mashed-potato sandwiches, brussel sprout sandwiches; my brain cells were starving from lack of food. I’ll eat anything. I’ll eat dirt.
When I’m doing a movie, I eat the same thing every day. For lunch, it’s tuna salad or chicken salad and cole slaw. That’s it. For dinner it’s either veal and rice, fish and rice or steak and rice. It gets boring; boy, does it get boring.
That’s the hardest thing about doing sequels – you’ve lost the element of surprise.
With a lot of comedians, one of their major attributes is that they look comedic, with a certain hangdog or manic expression. I look like the neighborhood bully. That doesn’t elicit laughter.
Years ago I was diagnosed with a condition, and my doctors prescribed human growth hormone and testosterone for its treatment. Under medical supervision, I have continued to use both medications.
A lot of time people are like, “oh my God, you’re stereotyped.” Good, then you’re known for something.