A conversation with the storied actor about his wisdom learned — about fighting, eating, and growing older.

You’ve got to understand. I’m a public-school guy. Sometimes you have to push somebody up against a chain-link fence if you feel they’ve done you wrong.

I was pretty good in school until algebra — when the numbers turned negative. I could never grasp that. I knew how to add and subtract. I knew how to divide the cookies in the tree house so that things were fair. But I couldn’t get negative numbers. I got left behind and lost a lot of confidence because of it. On a certain level, I don’t know if I ever did turn that around.

You have to try to dismiss the loudness of cynicism. It’s certainly going to come.

You can learn a lot more by what a man does than by what he says. I just watched how my father did things. He worked for the Southern California Edison company, and often when it stormed, the lines would go down. The phone would ring at two in the morning. And my mom, knowing that he’d been out working for two straight nights, would tell him, “I can say you’re not back yet.” And he’d say, “No, hand me the phone.”

I never used a negative number in my whole life. I doubt you have, either.

For more wisdom from Kevin Costner, read his full What I’ve Learned at Esquire.com.