“The most exciting acting tends to happen in roles you never thought you could play.”

“There was, he thought, an emotional truth here somewhere, and he could see now that his role-playing had a previously unsuspected artistic element to it. He was acting, yes, but in the noblest, most profound sense of the word. He wasn’t a fraud. He was Robert De Niro.”

“Americans tend to play different roles, hoping that somehow they’ll stumble on the right one.”

“Our research into human strengths does not support the extreme, and extremely misleading, assertion that 'you can play any role you set your mind to,' but it does lead us to this truth: Whatever you set your mind to, you will be most successful when you craft your role to play to your signature talents most of the time.”

“...But the problem is, people tend to assign you the role of the person you are at your worst, you know?”

“You can never know about about your own destiny: are the people you meet there to play a part on your oun destiny, or do you exist just to play a role in theirs?”