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I think the greatest of people in society carved niches that represented the unique expression of their combinations of talents, and if everyone had the luxury of expressing the unique combinations of talents in this world, our society would be transformed overnight.

I think the world would be a lot better off if more people were to define themselves in terms of their own standards and values and not what other people said or thought about them.

I suppose I'm led to do so by the fact of what happened to my contemporaries - people whom I've admired, people who I thought were ten times better than me when I was in my twenties and early thirties. I may have been right.

Throughout my life, there are four people I've met who were truly original people. The other three were Groucho Marx, Jim Morrison, and Pablo Picasso.

Scorsese and De Niro taught me to bring out the natural side of myself. And they taught me to think of myself as the average guy. Sometimes the average guy belongs in a role more than your matinee idol-type of person. We have to have people we can relate to.

I'm a believer in the ordinary person, that the ordinary person is just as important and has an equally unique perspective on the world as someone who is famous or perhaps more privileged.

I've never known anyone who was what he or she seemed; or at least, was only what he or she seemed. People carry worlds within them.

I don't really want to be compared to Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan, but I really feel honored and really proud that people actually see me as them or similar to them, and because they are my inspiration for what I have become today. I am really honored that people compare me to those people.

Great people have great egos; maybe that's what makes them great.