"My work up to then had been very uneven, I would be good one night, dull the next. Meisner made me aware of how to be…"

"I never thought of it (becoming a classic). It never occurred to me. I was going to be happy if it had a good, strong…"

"If a rumor comes out that I’m gay, I could care less. There are so many worse things that they could be saying."

"You get a script and you love it. You find a director that you trust, and it becomes all about how do I commit to thi…"

"Listen, when I arrived in Los Angeles in the early '40s, there were just 640,000 people. Every loser in the world hea…"

"Yeah, I'm unique—like an actor who has only one eye in the middle of his forehead. Or the Elephant Man. I've got a pa…"

"Got the same attitude I had when I started. Haven't changed anything but my underwear. I've played everything except …"

"For a while it looked like I was going to be stuck in westerns. I figured out I could make 6 a year for 60 years and …"

"You know you can't act, and if you hadn't been good-looking you never would've gotten a picture."

"As an actor he is superb. However you read a line, he has anticipated it. He is a fantastically sensitive, decent hum…"