I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool - and I'm not any of those - to say that I don't write for the reader. I do. But for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say. So I write for myself and that reader who will pay the dues.

Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes,' he said, his voice rising as applause and cheers mounted. 'Shake it off. Stop complainin'. Stop grumblin'. Stop cryin'. We are going to press on. We have work to do.

It's very important to like the people you work with. Otherwise, your job is going to be quite miserable.

Perfectionism and procrastination have such a fine line. You say, 'Well, I want it to be good. I want it to be perfect.' But what you're really doing is not doing your work. You're putting off showing up and being visible because then you're going to be judged, and it might suck.

If you ever think about me, and you ain't gonna do no revolutionary act, forget about me. I don't want myself on your mind if you're not going to work for the people.

If you're going to preach dedication, work ethic, teamwork, unselfishness, and being part of a team to accomplish a common goal, you have to live it - you can't just talk about it.

You can have anything you want, but not everything. If it was really important to spend an afternoon at my daughter's school, I had to think, how was I going to organize my life to do that? How could I become more efficient? I always tried to put my priorities on the table, personal and professional, and work around them.

My natural accent is American. I chose to speak with a U.K. accent when I was about to enter the final year at drama school in London. I was going to try to find a way to stay in the U.K. after I finished college and could not imagine trying to live and get work there with an American accent.

We are all in this together. We will all make it or none of us will make it. If everyone cleans up their act except one big ole country, it isn't going to work.

It's like gambling somehow. You go out for a night of drinking and you don't know where your going to end up the next day. It could work out good or it could be disastrous. It's like the throw of the dice.

Everyone wants to be safe. Well, I got news for you: You can't be safe. Life's not safe. Your work isn't safe. When you leave the house, it isn't safe. The air you breathe isn't going to be safe, not for very long. That's why you have to enjoy the moment.

I'm going to work so that it's a pure guts race at the end, and if it is, I am the only one who can win it.

I like being the underdog so they don't expect what's going to happen. It pushes me to work harder and do the things I'm not doing better.

Everyone has complicated lives, but the more you can simplify it and make it work for you, the better it is going to be.

It's not an experiment if you know it's going to work.

My story is going to be completely different than someone else's story in terms of hard work. What I might feel like is hard work, another person is dying to do.

As an actor, to have achieved financial stability is amazing. But I always have this weird fear that I'm not going to get any more work; it's about not having enough money.

Going to work for a large company is like getting on a train. Are you going sixty miles an hour or is the train going sixty miles an hour and you're just sitting still?

For me, every day is a new thing. I approach each project with a new insecurity, almost like the first project I ever did. And I get the sweats. I go in and start working, I'm not sure where I'm going. If I knew where I was going I wouldn't do it.

It's like Forrest Gump said, 'Life is like a box of chocolates.' Your career is like a box of chocolates - you never know what you're going to get. But everything you get is going to teach you something along the way and make you the person you are today. That's the exciting part - it's an adventure in itself.

Working hard is very important. You're not going to get anywhere without working extremely hard.

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.

Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. A constant coming and going: wisdom lies in the momentary.

It seems to me that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed 'Wisdom.' And then I know exactly what is going to follow: 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.'