All movies assault the viewer in one way or another.

When I was a little kid - and even still - I loved magic tricks. When I saw how movies got made - at least had a glimpse when I went on the Universal Studios tour with my grandfather I remember feeling like this was another means by which I could do magic.

Actors are steeped in a world of agents and where the next job is coming from and what are their expenses and what is the hotel like. You want to take them out of that world and dump them into another world so that when you meet them on the screen they don't seem like the guy who was in two others movies that year.

I will make action movies I think for a few more years another five years.

So one way or another I found myself in a few movies. I take it seriously when I'm on the set but I don't take myself seriously as an actor.

I wanted to do another movie that could make us laugh and cry and feel good about the world. I wanted to do something else that could make us smile. This is a time when we need to smile more and Hollywood movies are supposed to do that for people in difficult times.

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.

Another thing that's quite different in writing a book as a practicing newspaperman is that if you look at what you've written the next morning and you think you didn't get it quite right you can fix it.

I get up in the morning do my e-mail I check my e-mails all day. I'll go online and I'll buy my books at Amazon.com but I don't want to buy all of them because I want to go to Duttons and I want to buy books from another human being.

The United States dollar took another pounding on German French and British exchanges this morning hitting the lowest point ever known in West Germany.