Freeman: "The best way to guarantee a loss is to quit."

Freeman: "Was I always going to be here? No I was not. I was going to be homeless at one time, a taxi driver, truck driver, or any kind of job that would get me a crust of bread. You never know what's going to happen."

Freeman: "It's what I learn from the great actors that I work with. Stillness. That's all and that's the hardest thing."

Freeman: "But I can say that life is good to me. Has been and is good. So I think my task is to be good to it. So how do you be good to life? You live it."

Freeman: "And some places you been before are so great that you don't ever mind going back. Some places you been before you don't ever want to go back, you know, like Montreal in the Winter."

Freeman: "It can have an enormous effect because big budget movies can have big budget perks, and small budget movies have no perks, but what is the driving force, of course, is the script, and your part in it."

Freeman: "When I was a teenager, I began to settle into school because I'd discovered the extracurricular activities that interested me: music and theater."

Freeman: "And that if you become a star, people are going to go to see you. If you remain an actor, they're going to go and see the story you're in."

Freeman: "Most of the time it's the role. Sometimes it's the story and sometimes it just the paycheck. It's the little movies that come out as stories or the fact that I have work to go out, you know what I'm saying, you can only be out so long without work, you start getting antsy."

Freeman: "Let me be the first to tell you, drinking alcohol is the worst thing to do in cold weather. Hot soup is the best because the process of digesting food helps to warm you up."

Freeman: "Still, it can be more effective to accomplish what you need to accomplish with the minimum effort. Watch Anthony Hopkins. He doesn't appear to be doing anything. He is so still that you can't see him working, but you are drawn into his character through his very stillness."

Freeman: "One of the things you can always depend on - this is one of the truths of the universe, and you heard it first from here - whatever we decide we want to do is what we do."

Freeman: "Learning how to be still, to really be still and let life happen - that stillness becomes a radiance."

Freeman: "I always tell my kids if you lay down, people will step over you. But if you keep scrambling, if you keep going, someone will always, always give you a hand. Always. But you gotta keep dancing, you gotta keep your feet moving."

Freeman: "Life doesn't offer you promises whatsoever so it's very easy to become, 'Whatever happened to... ?' It's great to be wanted. I spent a few years not being wanted and this is better."

Freeman: "I am going to stop calling you a white man and I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a black man."

Freeman: "If you live a life of make-believe, your life isn't worth anything until you do something that does challenge your reality. And to me, sailing the open ocean is a real challenge, because it's life or death."

Freeman: "I do know there are a lot of people who seem to be in my corner, and that's, of course, wonderful. I'm really more interested in the nomination than in the award, because I think the nomination just puts you within a group of outstanding actors."

Freeman: "As you grow in this business, you learn how to do more with less."