Kevin Spacey

"Well, whoever Keyser Söze is, I can tell you he is going to get gloriously drunk tonight."

"Dianne, thank you for teaching me about caring about the right things, and I love you."

"Sometimes the person who is the most logical is the person whom we call insane."

"John Lennon was many things to many people. A poet, a rocker, a leader, a troublemaker, a father, a husband — a man. Growing up, to me, he was a hero. The work of John Lennon was marked by its exquisite beauty and by its brutal honesty. So in that vein, let me say, that while I'm both deeply honored to be here — I'm also incredibly pissed-off. I'm outraged because this passionate prophet of peace, and so many others, are not with us here — because we live in an all-too-violent world. And so in the spirit of this occasion it is up to all of us, to do what we can, not only to keep John's songs alive, but help rebuild New York — and that includes your host..."

"The thing that is always so surprising about plays written in another century is how remarkably elastic they are. When you listen to the way in which Shakespeare attacks relationships, for example, even though the words may start off sounding foreign, in actuality they are so accessible, the motivations so clear, the resonances so contemporary. When you put it in a modern context - we could well be in a place with someone like Gaddafi or Mubarak - it becomes apparent how Richard III resonates with that type of personality, with media and manipulation, alliances and petty jealousies."

"I have a lot of respect and admiration for Anthony Rapp as an actor. I'm beyond horrified to hear his story. I honestly do not remember the encounter, it would have been 30 years ago. But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior, and I am sorry for the feelings he describes having carried with him all these years. This story has encouraged me to address other things about my life. I know that there are stories about me and that some have been fueled by the fact that I have been so protective of my privacy. As those closest to me know, in my life I have had relationships with both men and women. I have loved and had romantic encounters with men throughout my life, and I choose now to live as a gay man. I want to deal with this honestly and openly and that starts with examining my own behavior."

"I mean, my mother knows. Or thinks she knows. Or supposes. Or suspects. I told her I was writing a story on Kevin Spacey, and she said, “Well, I hear he’s gay.” Now, you must understand some things about my mom. She is eighty years old and lives in a condominium in Florida. Although she loves movies—especially dark and intricate mysteries, which she calls “murders,” as in “You know how I like a good murder”—she has no connection to the movie business and has never, to my knowledge, outed anyone before. “Ma, where did you hear that?” “At the pool.” Of course—the pool. It is shocking what kind of knowledge is forced upon our parents—what kind of innocence is lost—at the pools of America. It is shocking, indeed, to imagine how many of America’s pools had to learn Kevin Spacey’s supposed secret before the supposed secret reached my mother’s pool and the grasp of her saintly and intrepid ears. One imagines the information—if information is what it is—creeping across the nation, from Hollywood to Florida, pool by pool, sort of like the dogged swimmer of Cheever’s short story, until at last an entire nation of moviegoers comes to hold Kevin Spacey under suspicion, until at last our own suspicion is all we know of him, all we have of him, all that’s left of him. It was not as surprising, though, to hear my mother repeat a rumor she’d heard about Kevin Spacey as it was to hear ostensible sophisticates in New York and Los Angeles repeat the very same rumor, as though my mother, on this count, were truly in the know; as though we have become unanimous in what we’ve heard, homogenized even to the extent of our access to secrets; as though the only thing one could possibly say about Kevin Spacey is what everyone else has already said, which is that he is supposed to be very smart, that he is supposed to be very private, that he is supposed to be extraordinarily committed to the protection and development of his extraordinary gifts as an actor, and that he is supposed to be gay. And that is all he’s supposed to be, by advance billing; that is it. He is one of our culture’s usual suspects, and, like the character he played in the movie of that name, he is both narrowed by our suspicions and set free by them, sprung by them, for he is an actor, and when all we know of an actor is that we don’t quite trust him, don’t quite believe him, then he is free to become whatever he wants to become, which, in the case of Kevin Spacey, is a movie star."