Dennis Quaid quotes:

It's hard for two actors to be together. Take the traveling, for instance. It winds up being a long distance relationship, all the time, because one's working here and one's working there, or one's staying at home and one's off someplace else.

When you break up, your whole identity is shattered. It's like death.

I owe the little formal education I got to my drama teacher, Mr. Pickett, who got us to read Shakespeare, Moliere, and other classics.

You don't bad-mouth your ex or anything like that. The key is your kid knowing that both parents still love him and are there for him.

There are three things being a celebrity is good for: raising money for charity, dinner reservations and tee times.

In my early teen years, I wanted to become a vet. That was my plan. I worked as a veterinarian's assistant for a couple of summers.

In aviation they have auto pilot and color radar and a lot of other instrumentation that is a backup for pilots. It's really brought the incidents of plane crashes way down. Same thing ought to happen in the medical industry, I think.

What I find is that we're all human beings and that it's all very similar, what we believe. At the bottom, there's really not that much difference between Christians and Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists. We all worship God.

I spent a weekend in the White House with President Clinton, back in '99, I guess. We played golf and just hung out and talked on many subjects. I saw him several times subsequently in L.A. He's the smartest man I ever met, a great politician. Everybody was star struck around him.

My real-life athletic career was not very much. I played Little League baseball.

You go to Main Street, and Wal-Mart is coming to town and kicking out all the mom and pop stores. All the people that were in the mom and pop stores are now working for Wal-Mart.

I don't know if I'd want to be a Secret Service agent. In the movies, it's exciting and romantic and all that. Really, most of their job is standing in a hallway for 12 hours making sure somebody doesn't come through a doorway off of a stairwell.

I love being a dad, and I'm good at it. Kids teach you about life, like how not to focus on yourself so much.

I love politics, but I wouldn't want to be involved in it. Too little money, too much work!

Families need a spiritual bond with one another and with God. God is the only way you're going to make it in life, the glue that holds everything together.

I guess I could say I'm an actor, which I am, but that sounds like I'm putting down being a movie star, which, let's face it, is what I've become to many people. For myself, I'm a guy who was very insecure from about age 14 until the day I hit my 30th birthday.

I have a resistance to change in things that I feel comfortable with and that I'm used to.

I'm lucky. I have a high metabolism, so I pretty much eat anything and everything.

I grew up in Houston, and I remember we had separate drinking fountains, and black people sat in the balcony of the theater... We had an African-American housekeeper growing up who was really like my second mother. I thought it was silly - hatred just because of the color of somebody's skin.

I used to eat a lot of fish, but I've been shying away from it because of the mercury thing. I eat more beef and chicken now.

Everybody just wants to be famous first, and then maybe learn how to act.

Horseracing and ranch horses are two different animals. You're getting race horses out and running and running them. It can be really problematic. A thoroughbred's very delicate.

I like acting and being a musician. It's like comparing apples and oranges. But I really like my day job. I've always played music since I was 12, and I guess I always will.

I want to work with great people. Great people really make you better.

There's no way that I could do a 9 to 5 job. There's no way. I was not cut out for that. You come in and you work for three months on the one job. They say, 'Great,' you know, and you're on to the next one - and you never even got fired. It's wonderful.

I love being a dad. Basically it's the most gratifying, rewarding relationship in life. But, at the same time, it certainly is the most challenging.

Before I was an actor, I was never able to hold a job for more than 3 months for some reason. It just wouldn't hold my interest, so there was some way that I wound up quitting or getting fired from it. But being an actor is perfect, because movies usually take about three months to shoot. Then it's over and they say, 'Hey, great job!'

Your partner has to live with the best and the worst part of you, and they're affected by it.

That's what is great about what I do, going from one job to the other.

When I was in my mid-20s, I traveled a lot around the world, and the question I had for everyone I talked to was, 'What is your conception of God?' I found that everybody basically felt the same: God is within and without. He's in everything.

Jesus himself talked about prayer and meditation. Anything that brings you closer to the Lord, what's wrong with that?

When I get a script, it's the only time that I get to be an audience member with the first-time experience of that movie. That's the first and only time.

I didn't play football in school, but I've been a fan of football all my life. I have a fair understanding of it. Doing movies about it really helps because you know what makes them work and what doesn't.

I can't hit a ball more than 200 yards. I have no butt. You need a butt if you're going to hit a golf ball.

Family is the most important thing in life, period.

I went out for the football team but, you know, I was too small. That's how I wound up in drama.

What, like I want to look like Dick Clark? No. I think I look great with liver spots.

Wall Street has come to America's heartland, really. The only thing missing are the skyscrapers, you know?

It's about... my only strategy I've ever had in my career is to do as many different types of roles as possible, as many different types of genres. It keeps the fire in my belly.

What they will do is, you know the tabloids. They'll take one element of a story that may be true and they'll build everything around it. Take a picture and invent a story around it.

God is the only way you're going to make it in life, the glue that holds everything together.

For many years, I was obsessed about what I was eating, how many calories it had, and how much exercise I'd have to do.

I was a really avid bowler when I was a teenager. I had about a 210-220 average. I had blisters on my fingers."

I was a really avid bowler when I was a teenager. I had about a 210-220 average. I had blisters on my fingers.

Certainly I'm a Christian first and foremost. But I do believe in religious tolerance and finding the commonality between all of us. I think that's how we're all going to come together.

I really want to see the Cubs in the World Series. I really do.

Legion' was a lot of fun to shoot. It was a real unique apocalypse scenario that takes place in a diner out in the desert. Very much like a drive-in B-movie, but in a good way.

I try to be eclectic in my choice of films. If I've done anything that's intentional in my career, it's to try to do as many different types of characters and as many different types of genres of movies that I can.

We all have one, in one form or another. To me, this dragon is both the wild nature of ourselves and our conscience in his embodiment of the Old Code ethical behavior and morality. At the same time, he's our unconscious, the place from which our dreams arise. I just spoke my lines to the dragon within me.

I was made to be a perfectionist at everything I did. Everything was more important than what I wanted.

It's as predictable as the sun rising in the morning. Every time Barack Obama's poll numbers rise you can be certain he's done something else to weaken the country. He's empowered a base that loathes American excellence.

I would like to work with Todd Phillips of 'The Hangover'. I would like to do more comedies; it would be a lot of fun. No actors in particular. I don't consciously seek out things to do.

A lot of people that I started out with, I don't know where they are. I guess it takes tenacity to still be doing this, and luck, but I've been very blessed.

I still have my original love for acting. That's why I feel so lucky. I think that's what sustains me in the sort of leaner times.

I was a guy back in the Eighties who was one movie away from a huge career, which at that time didn't happen. In the Nineties, I worked a lot, but it was kind of, 'Get out there and dig and find things.' Then I guess 'The Rookie' and 'Far From Heaven' were referred to as my comeback.

I'd love to do a golf movie. I turned down Don Johnson's role in 'Tin Cup.' I regret that.

Athletes are sort of part of the community at large. They have to be dedicated to what they do, and go through lots of peaks and valleys. And there's a lot of training that goes into their careers. It's a struggle. Very dramatic.

I learned to surf for 'Soul Surfer.' Surfing is like golf: You're always battling, and it keeps knocking you down. There are a lot of wipeouts. But when you stay with it and catch that wave, you really taste it. It's magic.

Surfing is like golf: You're always battling, and it keeps knocking you down. There are a lot of wipeouts. But when you stay with it and catch that wave, you really taste it. It's magic.

I was a late bloomer. I tried out for the football team, and I got locked off the field. That's how I wound up in drama.

I always want to find the best burger in town.

I directed a movie back in the '90s which had calf roping in it, and I got into it quite a bit back then.

If I've done anything intentional about my career, is that I really have not - I've chosen to try to do as many different types of things as possible. That's really what I like to do.

One thing I've really never had a problem with was memorizing lines. Most of the time I don't memorize the lines until we're on the set shooting the scene.

I have a ranch in Montana, but it's not a real working ranch. I've always liked the outdoors. I come from Texas. My grandfather was a farmer; that's as close as I come.

I found golf late in life, in 1990. I took some lessons and struggled. Then one day, I hit a drive that was so crisp and clean, with no vibration. There's no feeling like it. I was hooked.

I love acting and making your own luck. You have to recreate yourself, I guess. Although, I don't know how.

I love politics, but I wouldn't want to be involved in it. Too little money, too much work! I don't really have the personality for that.

If you're going to stick around in this business, you have to have the ability to reinvent yourself, whether consciously or unconsciously.

I look for a good story. Usually the best stories are the ones that are unbelievably true. 'Soul Surfer' is one of those stories.

When I choose a movie, I'll ask myself: 'Is this a movie I want to see?'

It's great to get paid for what you love doing most. To enjoy your work. And to follow that. It's important.

I was very uncomfortable with all the attention when it first started happening to me. I retreated quite a bit from the world, both physically and emotionally. But then you just accept that you can't control what the rest of the world thinks or does.

If we never felt sorrow, we'd never recognize bliss.

My family is the most important thing in the world to me, too, before anything else.

I always wanted to be an astronaut.

The truth [always] lies in things that have no words.

I'm not really a pitcher; I just play one in the movies.

Playing Bill Clinton is really, probably, the scariest time of my career.

My interpretation of a strong director is someone who knows their story. That's what directors are, they're storytellers because they're directing where your focus is going to be as an audience.

'Legion' was a lot of fun to shoot. It was a real unique apocalypse scenario that takes place in a diner out in the desert. Very much like a drive-in B-movie, but in a good way.

As I grow older, I put all life's bulls**t aside. I think the process of the laying off of the bulls**t starts around 40. Before that, most men have their heads stuck in their ass. After 40, you see things differently. You've found yourself. You're accepting yourself and what you got from life.

Back then, people were throwing their underwear onstage. I remember taking eight pairs of my own underwear to the cleaners and getting only four back.

I have always done my own stunts, and I have been in hundreds of fights in films, but I have never been in a fist fight outside the movies.

I could never hold a job for more than three months, which works out well because that's how long a movie shoots.

Golf is meaningless, but it means so much.

Going to the golf course every day for work? That's a good job.

I would like my kids to follow their bliss.

I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid. I grew up in Houston. Gordo Cooper was my favorite astronaut.

I love doing independent films, but it's very hard to make a living that way.

I've done so many movies that when I see them I don't really watch them.

I've always considered myself a character actor. That's the way I was trained, really.

Sometimes in movies, I still have to be the hero, but it's not all that important to me anymore.

What is great about art and artists is that we get to ask the questions, even though we may never know the answers.

I grew up Baptist and still go to church. I myself have explored other religions, because I want to know what it is that makes other people tick. I find we're all talking about the same thing, really - it's all God.

I'm an idol of cinema? Oh, wow.

I found myself in network always trying to play catch up because once things get going there's no time to fix this and that. And also the writing, it was more inclined to be by committee in network which drowns out the purity and the voice of the show.