I'm always looking for something that's real and that's got meat on it. I think it's artistic suicide if you're too vain, or if you're afraid to play ugly. I would never fall for that.

Personally I don't believe in bad people. I think there's always a reason for people acting badly.

I'm constantly embarrassed at the level of attention actors get and the level of money that we get. It's completely disproportionate.

A character on screen that's the 'good guy' or the 'bad guy,' they're never interesting. There's got to be an internal struggle, the duality is important to find.

In movies we tend make things black and white: you're either this, or you're that.

In terms of jobs, I'm an actor. There's gotta' be depth there. I'd never say yes to something just to play the hot guy. That's not what I'm interested in.

I don't want to ever think that I don't know what to do. I want to deal with my own things, to perform my own roles, to be like, "I did this."

I've lived in California for six years and I've never surfed.

TV is a very sensitive thing. If you're not happy with what you're doing, I don't think you should do it because you will do it for awhile.

I come from a family of pacifists, so it's not like I was going to join the war. Sweden is not like the States or England where you might get sent to Afghanistan next month.

Sweden is a small country and, well, our family's pretty prominent in that world, I guess. And I really didn't like the sound of just being 'the fourth acting Skarsgard.

One of the best roads to self-improvement is acceptance of personal mistakes and correcting them as soon as possible.

No one is capable of loving you like you can love you. Embrace your uniqueness

There is a lovely warmness about feelings of nostalgia as though in one's head one is putting on a pair of comfy old slippers and curling up in front of a fire.

You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.

Even listening to a lot of other music inspires me, too. Like I'll find something and be like, "I love this group!" And I want to write something that's kind of like this.

Actors have these delicate appendages called Egos.

When people talk to me about the weather, I always feel they mean something else.

It's better to be pissed off than pissed on.

There were so many odd, strange things about Abraham Lincoln that I think nobody knew how to pigeonhole him.

Economics is sometimes associated with the study and defense of selfishness and material inequality, but it has an egalitarian and civil libertarian core that should be celebrated.