David Mamet was great to work with. He was everything that I thought he would be as a director. He's incredibly articulate, an easy collaborator. Extraordinarily knowledgeable about film and writing.

I was the classic middle child in some ways, the one who could have been a priest in an alternate universe.

I like to disappear into a role. I equate the success of it with a feeling of being chemically changed.

Ive just tried to keep my eyes open, tried to read everything you can, and tried to see whether I see myself within it. If I do, then I can get excited about it.

The only way to be an actor is to find ways to work as an actor, even if that means doing a one-man show by a river.

When I first had my eyebrows waxed, I was pretty disturbed.

All roads lead home in the end. You've got to keep that in mind always - in your work and in your life.

It's a strange thing, but you get this click in your brain; the wonderful feeling that the entirety of a character is suddenly available and accessible to you.

I started working as an actor, semi-professionally, when I was 16, and got my first professional gig at 19. I guess I've kind of worked pretty consistently since then.

Ive always liked the idea of being a father. And Ive always romanticised it, because I lost my father when I was young. In a way, all of the complications that come with my career are about that.

I enjoy doing everything, comedy and drama. I just look for the characters really and what they offer.

There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.

The melody faded like a rainbow after a storm, or like winds calming down at last; and what was left was calm, and possibility, and relief.

I can't recall a day this year or last when I did not hear the name of Babe Ruth.

What would a nontoxic god think of your creative goals? Might such a god really exist?

Qualities absolutely necessary for a historian: (1) Imagination. (2) Prejudice. (3) The power of writing your own biography at the same time.

I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one.

Women had a tendency to see what they wanted to see i men, at least in the beginning

I am of the opinion that we shouldn't turn away from Europe. We have to find ways to revitalize our relations.

Waiting for supply-side economics to work is like leaving the landing lights on for Amelia Earhart.

May the things of this world so lose their power over us that we do not in the slightest wish to be 'worldly'; nay, we even delight in not remaining 'in the world.'