"I know some people who live this much more insulated life in Los Angeles, where their feet never touch public ground. They walk out of their bathroom, their living room, they get into their garage, their car, and the next thing you know, they're at the valet parking of the restaurant or the store or the office. They're in a bubble the whole time."

"I did not have a happy family life a few years ago. I was divorced, and I was very alienated from my daughter, and I was out there cutting every ribbon and running around New York hosting events for different causes to supplant my loss because I didn't have a family to go home to. Now I don't want to be Mr. Show Business anymore."

"Let's face facts, this is visual medium, there's a very high premium put on people who are good-looking. But the minute you rely on that you get yourself in trouble. You certainly don't make a career out of that anymore as an actor."

"I know there's an impression that I'm someone who seeks to have violent confrontations with people. I don't. Do I regret screaming at some guy who practically clipped my kid in the head with the lens of a camera? Yeah, I probably do, because it's only caused me problems."

"I never thought of myself as a wealthy person. I've thought of myself as a person who has had a lot of luck. I don't have the same stress that other people have, but there are too many things I could have done differently if wealth was what I was after. If I was all about money, I would have lived in L.A."

"A lot of people want to not wear a tie when they go to a restaurant. They feel they don't have to wear a tie. I think it's kind of a statement they're making. I don't know what that statement is. I haven't quite figured that out yet."

"Often in films, you have no idea where you're going to be six months from now. And I grew very weary of that. And television, although it wasn't necessarily as creatively diverse as filmmaking can be, it was the lifestyle choice that I needed to make."

"I remember during my lifetime I would meet women, and it was almost like God would say to me, 'Now, this woman here is not the one you are going to end up with, but she is going to be a lot like this woman; look at this woman, study this woman.' And when my wife showed up, He was like, 'You recognize her now?'"

"I was in college in Washington, D.C. I did three years full-time. I did all my requirements, and my senior year was really a gut year. And I said, 'Law school will always be there.' I was in no hurry to get right into that."

"My life, in some ways, has been a half-measure. I didn't commit myself all the way to my marriage and family, because I would have given up more. And I didn't go all the way with just being completely selfish. I always wonder where my career would be if I was more selfish."

"As my friend said to me, when you have children, typically in a second marriage, when you're older and you get married again to a woman who would have children, you must always remember that you make sure the children attend a college where the commencement ceremonies are held in a facility with a wheelchair accessible ramp."

"People don't understand this: if you want to have a really good shot at succeeding, there are doors you have to slam in people's faces and say, 'This is my priority, and you can't depend on me to help you.' I was never good at that."

"There are some times when you make films and you travel places, and the take that people in the business have is that the worst way to see a city is to shoot there, because you work these long 12, 13 and 14-hour days, and you go home to the hotel, you eat, and you pass out."

"I've had a relatively charmed life. I loved to be out in the city. New York was my town. I've had people come up to me and say, 'You're a great New Yorker. You've given your time and money to so many New York charities. You're a great supporter of the arts. I like some of your movies - and some of your movies suck, actually.'"

"I haven't changed, but public life has. It used to be you'd go into a restaurant, and the owner would say, 'Do you mind if I take a picture of you and put it on my wall?' Sweet and simple. Now, everyone has a camera in their pocket."

"I think Jerry Lee is sad. As a musician, he was far more talented than Elvis Presley. Everybody down in Memphis knows that. Elvis became a movie star because he was beautiful. Not that Elvis wasn't talented, but Jerry Lee Lewis was incomprehensibly talented as a musician."

"Look at the shows that are really successful on Broadway. They're musicals. They're things that a woman will pick out the tickets for, or a man will buy the tickets with a woman in mind. It's a date. It's boyfriend-girlfriend, husband-wife. That's what the theater in New York has become."

"Men are literally lying in bed with their wives when the marriage is essentially over, thinking, 'I've got to get the hell out of here', and have a fantasy woman in mind. Then you get divorced, meet a woman, marry her, and by the time all that goes by, you've aged a few years and are ready to go back to your ex-wife."

"Hollywood studios bury that stuff - actors who punch directors in the face and try to run producers over with cars - insanity, criminal behavior. But the studios are invested in that star, they can't have that person's name dirtied up."

"I'm a poet, and I like my lies the way my mother used to make them."

"One would go mad if one took the Bible seriously; but to take it seriously one must be already mad."

"May the New Year bring you courage to break your resolutions early! My own plan is to swear off every kind of virtue, so that I triumph even when I fall!"

"I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning."

"Having to talk destroys the symphony of silence."

"The sin which is unpardonable is knowingly and wilfully to reject truth, to fear knowledge lest that knowledge pander not to thy prejudices."

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."

"Magick is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will."

"Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people."

"Science is always discovering odd scraps of magical wisdom and making a tremendous fuss about its cleverness."

"Every man and every woman is a star."

"I hardly ever talk- words seem such a waste, and they are none of them true. No one has yet invented a language from my point of view."

"I've written this to keep from crying. But I am crying, only the tears won't come."

"Your kiss is bitter with cocaine."

"The Way of Mastery is to break all the rules—but you have to know them perfectly before you can do this; otherwise you are not in a position to transcend them."

"I've often thought that there isn't any "I" at all; that we are simply the means of expression of something else; that when we think we are ourselves, we are simply the victims of a delusion."

"What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over."

"It is the mark of the mind untrained to take its own processes as valid for all men, and its own judgments for absolute truth."

"Love is the law, love under will."

"It is necessary, in this world, to be made of harder stuff than one's environment."

"Happiness lies within one's self, and the way to dig it out is cocaine."

"Paganism is wholesome because it faces the facts of life...."

"For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect."

"Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales."

"Balance every thought with its opposition. Because the marriage of them is the destruction of illusion."

"We must conquer life by living it to the full, and then we can go to meet death with a certain prestige."

"Truth! Truth! Truth! crieth the Lord of the Abyss of Hallucinations"

"Some men are born sodomites, some achieve sodomy, and some have sodomy thrust upon them..."

"I was not content to believe in a personal devil and serve him, in the ordinary sense of the word. I wanted to get hold of him personally and become his chief of staff."

"The most delicious sensation of all is the re-birth of healthy human love. Spring coming back to Earth!"

"To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile. [....] The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter."