Dennis Quaid

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

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.

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

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!'

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.

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.

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.

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.

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