When you work in front of the people, either in a film or in television, the people who are in the room with you are not watching you work, they’re working so you’d have to light a fire to get them to watch what you were doing.
Tabouli is the best salad, but still, you don’t win friends with salad.
It must be remembered that the Bush White House has a separate talent for character assassination that must not be confused with a talent for governance.
I have more fun and more grand and glorious moments of my life than anyone I’ve never known. I know that some people call that manic-depress, and that other people call that being touched by God. I just call myself lucky.
I never had a role that I set out for. I always wanted to have a body of work that I’m proud of. Save for two projects, which will never pass my lips, I’m happy with what I’ve done.
If I wasn’t an actor, I’d be a teacher, a history teacher. After all, teaching is very much like performing. A teacher is an actor, in a way. It takes a great deal to get, and hold, a class.
John Kennedy really did extend the reach of the American people and said, like Lincoln said in a way, that our reach is farther than our grasp – and we should aim high.
When you Google me, you’ll find a lot of people don’t like Richard Dreyfuss. Because I’m cocky and I present a cocky attitude. But no one has ever disagreed with the notion I represent, that we need more civic education. So far there’s 100 percent support for that.
You don’t have to act as if you care; you just have to care enough to act.
I believe that a nation that allows music to be expendable is in danger of becoming expendable itself.
I decided at age 9, but I was reinforced at age 13 when a teacher told me I had talent. I can’t say she really motivated me because I already knew. I knew I had talent. I went to the Jewish community theater and got in plays there. Then I went for the movies.
We mistake politics for legislative debate. You can be passionate without being personal.
In my experience, it’s usually up to the actor how a character is portrayed.
I really think that living is the process of going from complete certainty to complete ignorance.
Let’s give some substance to patriotism. It may take a generation.
Power never turns power down, ever, unless institutionally demanded.
The bad guy always gets the best scene and the best lines in the film, and they usually get the most days off.
The rules are all wrong today. The mandate of the media really does pre-date the founding of the United States.
There is one solution to all of our problems: Teaching our kids clarity of thought and political representation in democracy. That’s it.
Civility is not not saying negative or harsh things. It is not the absence of critical analysis. It is the manner in which we are sharing this territorial freedom of political discussion. If our discourse is yelled and screamed and interrupted and patronized, that’s uncivil.
We have lost our faith in the powers that brought us this far – the powers of will, imagination, effort, and community.