I alternate between feeling incredibly lucky that I've gotten away with almost everything I wanted to do, and feeling like I've been shafted.
It's hard to give a dramatic shape to even the most dramatic life. . . . you are forced not just into selectivity, but into alteration, distortion and outright lying about what did and didn't happen.
You will never convince anyone to do anything unless you believe it should be done.
What am I hanging around for? But I'm hanging around because it's still fun.
Most of my movies get about a third raves, a third vicious attacks, and a third in-between.
The idea that there aren't mistakes made constantly in the judicial system is too obvious even to need to mention.
[Robert Downey was being singled out for] selective prosecution. He's a sweet guy who never did harm to anyone except himself. He's been doing drugs for 20 years and functioning for 20 years, and in those 20 years there've been hundreds of people who've been getting high constantly and behaved very destructively and have not been arrested. Robert's real problem is he gets caught.
Some people get married and they remain "I," some get married and become "we."
The past is history, the future's a mystery.
I work seriously with complete integrity. I never, never, never have offered a part to anyone who didn't deserve it, and I've never not delivered when I do offer a part. My word is better than a contract.
When people are temperate in their behavior, in their lives, someone who is addictive or extreme or obsessive can't understand how people can just go through their lives in the middle, and people who are rational and balanced can't understand the opposite. I'm one who's in the extreme camp in almost every area of my life and I always have been. I've observed that I'm in a minority, but I never understand people who are measured.
I think there's a general sense that the belief structures that existed and carried civilization forward have weakened to the point where they can no longer support it. They are not powerful enough to do it anymore because there is not enough serious belief in them.
To have six billion people on Earth, two billion of whom are carrying around a warped view of you? That has to register.
Death is a part of life, and eventually I assimilated that completely.
The collaborator has to be someone who understands that his role is to help you articulate what you want, but at the same time is not just going to be mechanically obeying, but adding to, supplementing, and coming up with stuff.
