The film business is absurd. Stars don't last very long. It's much more interesting to be a proper actor.

There just doesn't seem to be a market for something with aspiration anymore.

I don't want to peak too early. The worry is that you never know until it's all over whether you peaked at all - and then you're finished and it's too late.

I never did anything about my stardom, it never meant anything to me.

My occupation has been a great deal with David Foster Wallace, and he didn't manage it, and he was very much looking for something that isn't totally selfish, and finding meaning. It's a struggle.

I keep saying that backwards is all you can see. You can't see front. My wife says, "Stop, you're always in the past." She sees me sort of daydreaming.

I'm not religious. I love what Clive James said the other day. James is a brilliant writer, but he keeps on writing poems on stuff. And he said, "God doesn't have a leg to stand on."

This is something particular to actors, especially in plays, and in films, too - but in plays, it's like, don't get involved with anyone in the play.

My now-wife - we got together in '81, we married a few years after - she's been very good in the past about going in the theater with me to see actresses I had known. But then, she's not an actress.

It was still quite late when I got married, 30s, I don't know.

Time is the worst place, so to speak, to get lost in, as Arthur Dent could testify, having been lost in both time and space a good deal. At least being lost in space kept you busy.

Before I forget ...Beware the Ides of March.

Some novel lovers have no interest in comics, and some comics fans would never take the time to read a novel.

In general, the Internet was not designed to accommodate deliberate failures to communicate.

Wake up early everyday so that while others are still dreaming, you can make your dreams come true.

It might seem that an egg which has succeeded in being fresh has done all that can reasonably be expected of it.

We'll have a baby who stutters repeatedly We'll name him history

For storytelling purposes, there has to be conflict, but that doesn't mean the people have to be mean. I've never liked mean-spirited comedy.

I'd love to say that I could write political songs, but I don't feel clued-up enough.

It is amazing that when someone else spouts the nonsense you yourself believe you can readily perceive it as nonsense