I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat.

When I was in junior high school, the teachers voted me the student most likely to end up in the electric chair.

I have great expectations for the future, because the past was highly overrated.

Like I said, I’ve got too much respect for women to marry them, but that doesn’t mean you can’t support them emotionally and financially.

Most action is based on redemption and revenge, and that’s a formula. Moby Dick was formula. It’s how you get to the conclusion that makes it interesting.

Suddenly I’ve got an overwhelming desire to surround myself with the aura of classical and Romantic art.

I never quite understood these actors – though I envy them sometimes – who can lie out for a year or two. I feel as though time is a real pressing issue, and I want to get as much work done in the time that I have left.

When you’re on top and you lead the parade, everyone’s there throwing lilies and lilac water on your head. But when those parades have gone by and there’s a storm in your heart, there are very few people that are going to sit there and listen to you bemoan life.

I have a lack of fear, whereas in the past the fear of failure was a powerful motivator. Anyway, I have great expectations for the future, but I just don’t know if I’m the monarch of all I survey.

I love being verbal in films.

What I’m trying to do now in my life – not just with the building, but with everything – is to construct things that will have enduring qualities, and won’t just be ephemeral flashes in the pan.

I tend to think of action movies as exuberant morality plays in which good triumphs over evil.

I think that’s become passe, but if you can surround yourself with a kind of monument to yourself and your family – a statement – and you can afford it, then that’s a noble project.

I am a sensitive writer, actor and director. Talking business disgusts me. If you want to talk business, call my disgusting personal manager.

I believe there’s an inner power that makes winners or losers. And the winners are the ones who really listen to the truth of their hearts.

When I tried to branch out into comedy, I didn’t do very well at it, so I went back to doing what I do naturally well, or what the audience expects from me – action pictures.

I have two lovely sons and some good memories, but I’ve had a rather tumultuous personal life. It hasn’t been dull; I’ve been the Hiroshima of love.

I’ve been involved in something which was chaotic and insane. All I can say now is that I am, and intend to stay, a single man.

I respect a woman too much to marry her.

Once in one’s life, for one mortal moment, one must make a grab for immortality; if not, one has not lived.

I’m more focused and have a greater sense of challenge, because I constantly feel the weight of time.

Once is a man’s life, for one mortal moment, he must make a grab for immorality; if not, he has not lived.

I’ve kind of fashioned my life after a Slinky. Bend me in a million shapes, and eventually I’ll spring back to what I originally was.

It would be great to be able to pass on to someone all of the successes, the failures, and the knowledge that one has had. To help someone, avoid all the fire, pain and anxiety would be wonderful.

I think everyone has a certain kind of formula in their life. When you deviate from that formula, you’re going to fail big or you’re gonna win big.

I think that gravity sets into everything, including careers, but pendulums do swing and mountains do become valleys after a while… if you keep on walking.

If bad decorating was a hanging offense, there’d be bodies hanging from every tree!

Success is usually the culmination of controlling failure.

I’m a patriot of the heart.

Rambo isn’t violent. I see Rambo as a philanthropist.

I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat.

Playing polo is like trying to play golf during an earthquake.

I was very much into buying contemporary art, but I’ve just decided I want to get rid of it all. Not that it’s not great art, but all of a sudden my mood has changed, and I want to go back to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century masters.

That’s what Rocky is all about: pride, reputation, and not being another bum in the neighborhood.