In the second half of the 20th century, people are becoming more limited: Vocabularies are smaller, thoughts are smaller, aspirations are smaller, everything is very scaled down. Everyone is typecast.
Success is finding satisfaction in giving a little more than you take.
And if you can channel the truth of your own experience onto the stage, that’s what the audience wants to see.
I have more awareness of other people and, I hope, more sensitivity to their needs. I also find that I’m more direct and outspoken.
I remember telling a neurosurgeon, “Don’t give me too much information, because at the moment my ignorance is my best asset.”
There is no such thing as can’t.
I never said I will stand, I said I hoped to stand. It wasn’t a prediction.
My father is an intellectual and physical man, which is a rather unusual combination. He’s great. As he brought up me and my brothers and sisters, he ingrained in us that your appearance is not your responsibility, other than that you should not be a slob.
You should have a dream and absolutely go for it. Don’t let anybody say you can’t do it.
It never occurred to me that I was a leading man until I was 19 years old. I had been acting since I was 10, so that’s nine years and 30 or 40 plays, in school and summer stock, professional theater, too.
It’s defeatist to harp on what might have been, and yet, it’s hard to resist considering what might have been.
I did my first apprenticeship when I was 15, then joined the union when I was 17. I worked every summer in high school and college.
What can I do today to take a step forward?
On the wall of his rehabilitation room was a picture of the space shuttle blasting off, autographed by every astronaut now at NASA. On top of the picture it says, “We found nothing is impossible.” That should be our motto.
America is better when all of us take care of all of us.
I get pretty impatient with people who are able-bodied but are somehow paralyzed for other reasons.
When we turn our attention away from ourselves, our potential is limitless.
Every scientist should remove the word ‘impossible’ from their lexicon.
It’s important to me to say what I really mean.
Living a life with meaning means spreading the word. Even if you can’t move, you can have a powerful effect with what you say.
By reaching out, more comes back than you can possibly imagine.