James Earl Jones

“I was as content Off-Broadway as I was in a big Hollywood movie, and, I just try to be content wherever I am, you know.”

“Actors never discuss future plans.”

“It has to be real, and I think a lot of the problems we have as a society is because we don't acknowledge that family is important, and it has to be people who are present, you know, and mothers and fathers, both are not present enough with children.”

“Even during the rationing period, during World War II, we didn't have the anxiety that we'd starve, because we grew our own potatoes, you know? And our own hogs, and our own cows and stuff, you know.”

“I love to see actors' work. I love to surf channels late at night and accidentally run into movies I hadn't seen before. It makes me very proud of the profession.”

“When I read great literature, great drama, speeches, or sermons, I feel that the human mind has not achieved anything greater than the ability to share feelings and thoughts through language.”

“I'd like to film a British commercial; they're better than American ones.”

“My grandmother had the most dramatic effect on my life because she set me in one direction, and I had to go back the other direction for my sanity, and for my ability to be a social human being.”

“So in my junior year, I switched to the drama department.”

“And it was the idea that you can do a play - like a Shakespeare play, or any well-written play, Arthur Miller, whatever - and say things you could never imagine saying, never imagine thinking in your own life.”

“I don't ever want to be a sentimentalist. I prefer to be a realist. I'm not a romantic really.”

“I knew real show business from my father, who had been an actor since he left the world of boxing.”

“Before my grandpa built his own church, we went to the neighboring town, and it was a white community. You know, up north, mostly middle European people and Indians, Chippewa Indians. We were welcome to that church, but once we got in, they didn't know what to do with us.”

“You cannot be an actor like I am and not have been in some of the worst movies like I have. But I stand before you deeply honored, mighty grateful and just plain gobsmacked.”

“More and more, when I single out the person out who inspired me most, I go back to my grandfather.”

“The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will loose.”

“You don't build a bond without being present.”

“Stuttering is painful. In Sunday school, I'd try to read my lessons, and the children behind me were falling on the floor with laughter.”

“Speech is a very important aspect of being human. A whisper doesn't cut it.”

“So I was determined to use my last two years in college doing something I thought I would enjoy, which was acting. And it was probably because there was girls over in the drama school too, you know?”