Denzel Washington

I want to be responsible. If I give you 50 million, it's because I want my money to come back. Not because I like your haircut.

It's about one of the biggest and most notorious drug dealers in the history of America, Frank Lucas and a New York detective, Richie Roberts, who tracks him down.

The hat kept the sun off of me but, to be honest, it's a handle. I worked the hat. We had one hat and one tie, by the way. I don't know if anyone knows this, but by the last scene in the movie at the restaurant, the hat is falling apart.

Part of the reason I liked the idea of doing the film was that it was very wordy. I was getting good practice playing Brutus. So 'Inside Man' felt a bit like Shakespeare goes to the streets or something.

We do what we have to do so we can do what we want to do.

You pray for rain, you gotta deal with the mud too. That's a part of it.

Where I think the most work needs to be done is behind the camera, not in front of it.

The poorest people are the sweetest people.

One good thing about acting in film is that it's good therapy.

Meryl and Katharine Hepburn are probably the two greatest actresses of this and the last century.

In Los Angeles, everyone is a star.

In any profession it gets to be a grind.

If you have an enemy, then learn and know your enemy, don't just be mad at him or her.

If I am a cup maker, I'm interested in making the best cup I possibly can. My effort goes into that cup, not what people think about it.

I've worked in a factory. I was a garbage man. I worked in a post office. It's not that long ago. I like to think that I'm just a regular guy.

I've been fortunate. I don't pick scripts. Scripts pick me.

I'd be more frightened by not using whatever abilities I'd been given. I'd be more frightened by procrastination and laziness.

Family is life acting is making a living.

Everybody has a job to do. There are people in Iraq on both sides of this war who do what they do for religious reasons, and they feel with God on their side. Some people are good at annihilating people. Maybe that's their gift.

Any good piece of material like Shakespeare ought to be open to reinterpretation.

I played Othello, but I didn't sit around thinking how Laurence Olivier did it when he played it. That wouldn't do me any good.

When I did A Soldier's Story, I was very young and green and thought I knew everything-now I know I know everything

The time to worrying about flying is when you're on the ground. When you're up in the air, it's too late. No point in worrying about it then.

If you don't trust the pilot, don't go.

I think the bottom of the totem pole is African-American women, or women of colour. I think they get the least opportunities in Hollywood.