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I try to think what the character is thinking. Then, hopefully, I begin to feel it. I act and react not because I'm recalling a dog killed by a fire engine, but because I'm concentrating on what the character is going through.

Toward the end of his life, one can sense that he was no longer thinking his way into the minds of others, causing them to speak on his behalf, but that he was now speaking for himself.

In real life, you don't know what's going to happen to you, so why would your character know? It's liberating to play the emotion your character is feeling at the time and not know what's coming up. I like it.

The way I navigate scenes is through what I perceive to be the emotional truth of the character: what he wants from moment to moment.

In character, as it were, the writer settles for an impression of what happened rather than creating the sense of the thing happening.

I just let the character speak to me and things appear.

I do tend to think that I've written a great deal out of my unconscious because half the time I don't know what a given character is going to say next.

Character is the ability to carry out a good resolution long after the excitement of the moment has passed.

Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.