Matt Quotes

For Ripley I learned to play some songs on the piano, and I never really played them again.

The ideal life is you don't sell a single magazine, nobody's interested, but they want to come see your movie. Because that gives you true freedom.

I've passed on a lot of huge-money jobs. Money doesn't enter into the decision-making. If I do a big blockbuster, it's about how big an audience you'll get and where you can take them.

It was shameful and embarrassing that there were two years in a row without a single actor of color nominated. That's insane.

He's famous for being obsessive about details.

I usually play characters that are a lot different than me. I mean, I'm never in a fight in a movie and if I'm in them, I'm usually losing.

The director's in charge of every single decision [in film]. It's a dictatorship.It's a benevolent dictatorship, but it's true. It's every single shot. There's nothing arbitrary.

You know, a one-term president with some balls who actually got stuff done would have been, in the long run of the country, much better.

Clint Eastwood just runs an incredibly tight ship, but it's really laid back.

My parents divorced when I was young but I was brought up in two really loving households. I didn't have a contentious relationship with my mom or dad.

The better the actor, the less you know about his life. I mean, nobody's better than De Niro and you don't know anything about him, right?

It's an objective fact, that if you want to solve some of these huge, kind of bigger problems of extreme poverty, you have to include the women. They're the ones who will get it done.

I'm not Brad Pitt or George Clooney. Those guys walk into a room and the room changes. I think there's something more... not average, but everyman about me.

I didn't grow up with great privilege, nor did I grow up wanting for anything. I was a middle-class kid and, relative to the rest of the world, that's great wealth.

As actors, we react to the material that's out there, and I probably just react more strongly to things that I feel will have some social value.

It's pretty easy to kind of lose your way. Having kids is really helpful. They kind of disabuse you of the notion of your greatness pretty quickly.

I'd love to be a dad. I hope I'd be great at it. That's every man's fear, yet his most important job.

Maybe if we sit out for the next few years and let Clint Eastwood get a little experience, he's going to be a good director.

I guess I don't really know what I want to do, either. Sometimes I feel like a shook-up bottle of soda. Like, I have all this passion that wants to explode, but I don't know where to aim it yet.

I was really drawn to spoken-word style poetry. I loved the rhythms, and for some reason, I was just drawn to this poetry as a way of expressing my feelings, because I didn't have any other outlet.

When I'm there, it's pure silence. There are other writers there, too, and I get super competitive. I have this weird fear that some guy next to me is writing this amazing novel, so I got to compete.

Being the first to go to college in my family was a great thing, but it was also a source of guilt. I felt like almost a sellout going to college.

I feel like I have a lot of novel ideas, but they often come up while I'm already in the process of working on a book. You have to watch out with the slutty new idea.

Growing up as a mixed-race kid myself, when you are in the middle of it and you're young...you don't think about it consciously. It's your reality.

To me, if the writing doesn't have rhythm, it feels dead. I lose all confidence. The music has to emerge to feel confident enough to move on to the next major chapter.

If I have a great game, I don't get too high. If I have a terrible game, I don't get too low. I know that there's more to this life and we were created for more than just to play a game.

I'm not a Buddhist, or a card-carrying member of any religion.

As an actor, you can't be off the market for too long.

I like to do comedy, but I'll be perfectly honest, I prefer to do drama and more character-driven-based stuff, generally.

Of course, if you're gonna make movies, you gotta make movies, and I'm not gonna say no to a good role.

I'm not the greatest boyfriend, but I'm not a creep. It's more like I'm... absent-minded.

I think anytime you can do something you haven't seen or done in a film before, it's always a great day as an actor.

I don't worry about whether a character is likable, as long as the character is believable.

It's a pretty good job being an actor, but it's work sometimes. And when I say work, I mean it's a job.

Acting is very competitive. There are few good scripts out there and the ones that are good are very competitive. You look at your options and often times they're not too appealing.

I don't like movies where everything happens fast. I like the buildup, the obstacles, the mystery.

Actors don't generally go asking other actors for advice too much, but I'll take suggestions wherever I can.

I don't consider myself a Hollywood liberal, but I have my convictions and my beliefs.

My driving, I've been accused of not being the best, most safest driver.

I like conflict, drama's conflict and if you don't have that in the character it's really not a worthwhile role to play for me.

Don't get into this false sense that you are an individual when you're on Facebook. No. You're Not. You're a pawn in their scheme.

I've been traveling a lot, and I'm seeing a lot of desperation everywhere in America. A lot of sad desperation.

They could put Hillary Clinton's brain in a jar in the Oval Office, and she'd be elected. People are really sick.

This generation is frightened of ideas, or at least it's being suppressed.

I live in a world that's free, colorful, vibrant, takes chances, bold, stands up to power, umm, and that's where I've mad my success.

You've gotta be dynamic in media. That's the only thing that's gonna work.

I need no traffic from Google. I don't care if I get one traffic referral from Google, or Bing, or Yahoo, or any of these others. It's always been that way.

I realize that just my personality is, that I've gotta stay focused. I can't be too distracted.

The reality of the situation is life on Earth has not changed. We need facts, we need events, we need specifics on things.

With a modem, anyone can follow the world and report on the world-no middle man, no big brother. I guess this changes everything.