Nicolas Cage

“I'm not a trained actor. I'm someone who is autodidactic and learned on my own.”

“How do you rebel in a family of rebels? That's the age-old question. I guess I could have by not going into the arts, but the thing is, I couldn't do anything else.”

“I want to make all kinds of movies. I do want to make big movies that are a lot of fun to go to, but I also want to make movies that are going to stimulate some thought and maybe raise some awareness.”

“Snakes are sometimes perceived as evil, but they are also perceived as medicine. If you look at an ambulance, there's the two snakes on the side of the ambulance. The caduceus, or the staff of Hermes, there's the two snakes going up it, which means that the venom can also be healing.”

“My father once said, 'If you're in the desert and you're dying of thirst, are you going to drink a glass of blood or are you going to drink a glass of water?' I think what he was trying to say, interesting coming from my blood father, is sometimes there are people in your family that can be toxic.”

“I like both Blu-ray and DVD, but Blu-ray gives you more options.”

“I always see America as really belonging to the Native Americans. Even though I'm American, I still feel like a visitor in my own country.”

“Mike Myers as Austin Powers makes me laugh - that was genius - and Daffy Duck makes me laugh, but I like odd behavior. I don't like hip dialogue and one-liners and all that sort of cool, sophomoric comedy. It's just not for me.”

“Children, to me, are of the utmost importance. They're really the future, aren't they?”

“I think the paparazzi might have chased me out of Los Angeles.”

“I've always had a soft spot for comic books. I learned to read from them. The words in them were so interesting.”

“I've acted professionally since I was 16.”

“I'm not an anarchist any more. I still love the Sex Pistols, but I don't want to be a punk rocker all the time, but I do want to carry on exploring new forms of acting.”

“Actors have an opportunity to use storytelling as a way to solve pain.”

“Look, I happen to still like really dark, dramatic, fractured characters.”

“Mel Blanc is a hero because of what he could do with his voice for all the Looney Tunes, the Warner Brothers cartoons, to be the voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig.”

“Science fiction is a way that I can go into the abstract, go into the imagination, and audiences are still willing to go along for the ride.”

“As a child, these colourful superheroes that could fly, or were horrifying like Ghost Rider and the Hulk, with this tremendous rage or these supernatural powers, provided an escape for me from my mundane existence, from my lack of friends or my inability to communicate well with people. They liberated me.”

“Film acting is one of the only industries where you're criticized for working hard. In any other industry, it's considered a quality and something to behold.”

“I'll speak for myself, but there's a lot of humor to be found in sarcasm and darkness. You talk to any paramedic, they survive by developing a pretty off-kilter sense of humor.”