Actors From Illinois

"I was like, Alright, so I’m doing comedy at night, and during the day, I’ll make beats and stuff"

"It's bigger than I am"

"It's not self-congratulatory, it's not announcing itself, it's just accepting it as a normal reflection of our reality"

"Wait. She just locked herself in a room, took some Vyvanse, and made an album?’ That’s me any day of the week"

"I don't think it really hits you until it's out in the world and you see how much it means to people"

"It just felt so democratic in a way that was really exciting to me. It felt like something I could always be low-stakes doing in the background, and whether I did something with it or not, I enjoyed doing it, so it didn’t really matter"

"Humor is a very, very important part of our life. It's not just laughing at a joke, it's an attitude toward life. And as the world gets crazier, it's more important to laugh at it. It's a survival technique."

"[Imagining a telephone conversation between an advertising executive and Abraham Lincoln just before his Gettysburg Address] Hi Abe, sweetheart. How are you, kid? How's Gettysburg? ... Sort of a drag, heh? Well, Abe you know them small Pennsylvania towns, you seen one you seen 'em all. ... Listen Abe, I go the note. What's the problem? ... You're thinking of shaving it off? Abe, don't you see that's part of the image with the shawl and the stovepipe hat and the string tie? ... You don't have the shawl. Where's the shawl? ... You left it in Washington. What are you wearing, Abe? ... A sort of cardigan? Abe, don't you see that doesn't fit with the string tie and the beard> Abe, would you leave the beard on and get the shawl."

"Abe, you got the speech. ... Abe, you haven't changed the speech have you? ... Oh, Abe. What did you ya change the speech for? ... A couple of minor changes? ... I'll bet. All right, what are they? ... You what? You typed it! Abe, how many times have we told you — on the backs of envelopes. ... I understand it’s harder to read that way, but it looks like you wrote it on the train coming down."

"If you accuse Kyle Rittenhouse of “faking tears” from being forced to relive the trauma of having to shoot violent, armed child-rapists and arsonists, but claim PTSD from being called the wrong pronouns..."

"If you’re pointing a weapon at anyone on set without permission from the armorer, director & 1st AD, then you should be reprimanded for the first offense, fired for the second. If you do so and harm/kill someone, you should be be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

"Life is so much a daily exercise in learning to love yourself and forgive yourself, over and over."

"The reality is that LGBTQ+ people face challenges at disproportionally higher rates than their straight counterparts - drug use, sex work, and financial instability can be an unfortunate result. My privilege as a young cis white man whose parents weren't going to let me drown afforded me the ability to make those mistakes and live to talk about it."

"More families should watch the Olympics together. To me, those are core American family values: Cheering on a corrupt institutional body that's super problematic with money and opportunity but we all pretend like it's an equal playing field and celebrate it - what's more American than that?"

"There are a million ways to reach recovery. Don't let anyone tell you you can't find a way that works for you."

"My philosophy was very much to embrace yourself and love what you are, instead of making you something you're not. Refine what you already have - don't change it at its core. That's always been my whole ethos."

"Most of my twenties I was focused on survival or self-destruction. I worked hard to get through the turbulence caused by my childhood, and I had come out stronger, smarter, and developed the tools to self-soothe and grow. Now I was ready to help others do the same. To have the opportunity to be able to do things for other people, to try to be my best authentic self and have that resonate in a way that inspires self-acceptance in others, was blowing my mind on a minute-by-minute basis."

"Just because we mess up doesn't mean all the lessons we learned are undone. Healing can be imperfect."

"Being normal is being completely unique, because nobody's the same."

"We are all a beautiful jumble of layers, parts, and mixtures of experiences, but my most important part, and in my opinion everyone's most valuable part, is the one that chooses self-love instead of self-harm in the grand sweeping ways but also the little ways every single day."

"As an actor, he understands his power very well -- he knows how to scintillate with mystery"

"I like the death-cult aspect of Catholicism, every religion is interested in death, but Catholicism takes it to a particularly high level. I mean, you can't miss Easter Sunday. Everybody's born, but rising from the dead -- nobody else did that. Seriously, in Catholicism, you're supposed to love your enemy. That really impressed me as a kid, and it has helped me as an actor. I don't believe there are bad people. Just people who do bad things. The way that I view the characters I play is part of my religious upbringing. To abandon curiosity in all personalities, good or bad, is to give up hope in humanity. Like somebody who is mumbling on the street -- I'm always curious if his words make any sense. I'm interested in lost souls. They possess another sort of secret."

"Peter did not have the typical profile of an actor, neither of us were hip. But as strong as his personality is, he could be like sand and fill different shapes. There was a part of him that was shy, but also a part that was out there. It was cathartic for Peter to act."

"When I was a small child, for some reason—and I don’t know if this was from cartoons or movies or what—I was very frightened of skeletons. I also was very afraid of the dark. I used to have incredibly terrible nightmares. I was afraid of everything as a child. Now look what I’m doing."

"I’m a big fan of the Creature from the Black Lagoon. I love them all, and the Wolf Man would be my second favorite. I really love them all but there’s something so unique about the Creature and I just love him. You know, I think they made a mistake in the third part of the trilogy when they converted him into a land beast because it really limited him. You’ll notice that was the end of the story of the Creature, ironically enough. I keep hearing they are looking to remake the film, but I hope they are planning on keeping him as he was- keep him in the lagoon!"

"I think you can meet the right girl at the wrong time, and it gets screwed up. If you meet the right girl at the wrong time, that girl has to be the most understanding person in the world because there's going to be a lot more bumps in the road. And, hey, it might be the right time for the guy and not for the girl, but if it's not the right time for one of them, and the other one tries to control that, it's not gonna have a happy ending. Both people have to be ready, and they might not think they're ready... that's why I think it's the right girl first."

"The first Elm Street was such a fresh idea and it absolutely blew me away. But the second one didn’t have Wes involved and I think it suffered as a result of that. With the third one Wes and his writing partner Bruce Wagner already had a script before I came onboard. Then me and Frank Darabont did some re-writes. We thought ‘why can’t we make this film wilder and much more fun that the first one’. I realised that the heart of it was these adolescent kids. These 15/16 year old kids who are just at that age when you start to realise that bad things happen in the world. Of course, none of the adults believe the kids about Freddy so going to them always makes things worse in these films."

"Ridin' up in them GTO's and 4-4-2's, Grand Prix's, S.S's, causes we so so cool"

"Watch out for the medallions, my diamonds is reckless, feels like a midget is hangin' from my necklace."

"Ridin' Regals all them Lacs, Benz, Bells, Verts, Skylarks, Motorcycles, ATV's with the works"

"And we jolly green giants cuz we smoke so much broccoli"

"Move Bitch!"

"No gold or platt I was simply red from the years i been holdin' back"

"Comin' to Shady Park is like a freak show, there's some respectable women, and there some freak hoes"

"Sam is the only person I've ever physically threatened on a set."

"I remember a decade ago at my first annual meeting in St. Louis. After my banquet remarks to a packed house, they presented me with a very special gift. It was a splendid hand-crafted musket. I admit I was overcome by the power of its simple symbolism. I looked at that musket and I thought of all of the lives given for that freedom. I thought of all of the lives saved with that freedom. It dawned on me that the doorway to all freedoms is framed by muskets. So I lifted that musket over my head for all to see. And as flashbulbs popped around the room, my heart and a few tears swelled up, and I uttered five unscripted words. When I did, that room exploded in sustained applause and hoots and shouts that seemed to last forever. ... So as we set out this year to defeat the divisive forces that would take freedom away, I want to say those words again for everyone within the sound of my voice to hear and to heed, and especially for you, Mr. Gore: From my cold dead hands!"

"I always work on the theory that the audience will believe you best if you believe yourself. This meant that I had to come to understand Moses well enough to believe in my portrayal of him."

"NRA members are in city hall, Fort Carson, NORAD, the Air Force Academy and the Olympic Training Center. And yes, NRA members are surely among the police and fire and SWAT team heroes who risked their lives to rescue the students at Columbine. "Don't come here"? We're already here. This community is our home. Every community in America is our home."

"Thank you all for coming and thank you for supporting your organization. I also want to applaud your courage in coming here today. Or course, you have a right to be here. As you know, we've cancelled the festivities, the fellowship we normally enjoy at our annual gatherings. This decision has perplexed a few and inconvenienced thousands. As your president, I apologize for that. But it's fitting and proper that we should do this. Because NRA members are, above all, Americans. That means that whatever our differences, we are respectful of one another and we stand united, especially in adversity. I have a message from the mayor, Mr. Wellington Webb, the mayor of Denver. He sent me this and said, "Don't come here. We don't want you here." I said to the mayor, well, my reply to the mayor is, I volunteered for the war they wanted me to attend when I was 18 years old. Since then, I've run small errands for my country, from Nigeria to Vietnam. I know many of you here in this room could say the same thing. But the mayor said "Don't come." I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry for the newspaper ads saying the same thing, "Don't come here." This is our country. As Americans, we're free to travel wherever we want in our broad land."

"Tragedy has been and will always be with us. Somewhere right now, evil people are planning evil things. All of us will do everything meaningful, everything we can do to prevent it, but each horrible act can’t become an axe for opportunists to cleave the very Bill of Rights that binds us. America must stop this predictable pattern of reaction. When an isolated terrible event occurs, our phones ring demanding that the NRA explain the inexplicable. Why us? Because their story needs a villain. ... That is not our role in American society and we will not be forced to play it. ... Now, if you disagree that's your right, I respect that, but we will not relinquish it, or be silenced about it, or be told "do not come here, you are unwelcome in your own land.""

"To me Moses is all men grown to gigantic proportions. He was a man of immense ability, immense emotions, immense humanness and immense dedication. There is something of Moses in each of us — the more there is, the better we are. It is interesting to note that once Moses climbs Mt. Sinai and talks to God there is never contentment for him again. That is the way it is with us. Once we talk to God, once we get his commission to us for our lives we cannot be again content. We are happier. We are busier. But we are not content because then we have a mission — a commission, rather."

"You could say that the paparazzi and the tabloids are sort of the "assault weapons" of the First Amendment. They're ugly, a lot of people don't like them, but they're protected by the First Amendment — just as "assault weapons" are protected by the Second Amendment."

"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder. Yet in essence, that is what you have asked our loved ones to do, through an ill-contrived and totally naive campaign against the Second Amendment."

"Political correctness is tyranny with manners."

"You do not define the First Amendment. It defines you. And it is bigger than you. That's how freedom works. It also demands you do your homework. Again and again, I hear gun owners say, how can we believe anything the anti-gun media says when they can't even get the facts right? For too long, you have swallowed manufactured statistics and fabricated technical support from anti-gun organizations that wouldn't know a semi-auto from a sharp stick. And it shows. You fall for it every time."

"I simply cannot stand by and watch a right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States come under attack from those who either can't understand it, don't like the sound of it, or find themselves too philosophically squeamish to see why it remains the first among equals: Because it is the right we turn to when all else fails. That's why the Second Amendment is America's first freedom."

"Charlton Heston once told me that getting ahead in acting was more a matter of luck than talent and skill; but then he hastily amended that. "What I meant," he said, "was that there are a lot of skillful and talented people out there, far more than the industry can absorb, so that it takes luck, at least one good break, to rise above the crowd. However, if you haven't done your homework and developed your skills, one good break won't do you any good because you won't be able to exploit it.""

"Telling us what to think has evolved into telling us what to say, so telling us what to do can't be far behind. Before you claim to be a champion of free thought, tell me: Why did political correctness originate on America's campuses? And why do you continue to tolerate it? Why do you, who're supposed to debate ideas, surrender to their suppression? Let's be honest. Who here thinks your professors can say what they really believe? It scares me to death and should scare you too, that the superstition of political correctness rules the halls of reason. You are the best and the brightest. You, here in the fertile cradle of American academia, here in the castle of learning on the Charles River, you are the cream. But I submit that you, and your counterparts across the land, are the most socially conformed and politically silenced generation since Concord Bridge. And as long as you validate that ... and abide it ... you are — by your grandfathers' standards — cowards."

"Let me make a short, opening, blanket comment. There are no "good guns". There are no "bad guns". Any gun in the hands of a bad man is a bad thing. Any gun in the hands of a decent person is no threat to anybody — except bad people."

"Moses is the keystone to every man's ethical code. He was the first man of record in history to conceive of the law as separate from the will of a ruler, to choose whether a man should live by grace of law, or law by grace of man. In a literal sense Moses lives at every council table today."