“Actors are conditioned to develop a system for expressing as much as they can in the shortest amount of time because you're going to get all cut up in a movie.”

“Directing is: you're overwhelmed the whole time. Your mind never stops. If you care about it. You wake up in the morning and you begin thinking about it and then you go to sleep at night and you're still thinking about it.”

“I had been to New Mexico many times. I loved it. It's a very exotic, interesting, severely crazy environment. I don't know if I could live there all year. It's such an intense place.”

“I hate to tell you this, but there's an entire subset of people out there who think of me as quite a dull actor. And that's the word used, and often - dull.”

“I just wanna get to the end of the day without it raining.”

“I know it's good when I see a smaller film get recognized because it means more publicity for them. When you start producing and directing the movies become a little more like your children.”

“I learned, especially from my mother, to respect the profession and take it seriously, but not take yourself too seriously.”

“I make little movies, you know, they need all the help that they can get.”

“I only made two studio movies, that was a long time ago and obviously I removed myself. I think some of that is geographical. I live in New York and I want to work there, it's as simple as that.”

“I tend to turn down roles that are too much like me, what I think is most like me anyhow, because I'm me all the time and I'm sick of it.”

“I think people tend to live, whether they like it or not, influenced by what's next door to them.”

“I worked with Lukas Haas a long time ago, when he was younger, and he was wonderful.”

“If you're playing a good guy, you show some darkness. If you're playing a dark guy, you show something different, like humor, that will mix it up and hopefully surpass the audience's expectations. What I'm battling all the time is complacency in the audience. I try to bring a little mystery to what might happen because that engages people more.”

“I'm known as a kind of dramatic, serious, almost humorless actor and the fact is, I'm a funny guy, and I spend most of my life trying to find a lighter side of things, and on stage was given plenty of opportunity to do that.”

“I'm not a big one for lots of genitals flapping in the films.”

“In the editing room, 20 percent of the time you're using stuff from before the actor knew the camera was rolling or you're taking a line from somewhere else and putting it in his mouth.”

“Most of us... are simply just trying to get through the day. And wait for those times in their life that are markers, that put things into relief. That's why we like movies and books so much.”

“Part of the advantage, and part of the result of trying to be a producer and director, are the practical things, you find. It's so advantageous to go to a place that you already have a feel for, a literal and spiritual familiarity.”

“Shakespeare is rich and beautiful, and it can be an amazing experience to read and to watch and to work on.”

“Television and cable have become the new independent films, in a sense, for writers and actors to gravitate towards. That's why I like short films, too; I love doing readings, audio books, working with young filmmakers; anything that keeps you from getting blase about yourself or in a rut.”

“The fact is, it's hard to release movies.”

“The fact is that you're never gonna believe any of the reviews, because the movie is to you what it is to you. No one's ever gonna sway you from what you feel about it.”

“The reason I got into acting was not to explore myself. I was a reader, I didn't care about acting. I got into it in college, but I had no interest really in that, in getting up in front of anybody.”

“There's no doubt in the world that directing makes you a better actor. Me, anyway. There's no doubt in the world that it makes me a more collaborative actor.”

“What we do at its very, very best, at its very, very most, will shift us slightly in our seat. If only for two hours, great. If for the rest of our lives, even better.”

“Working hard is great, being lazy sometimes is great, but failed potential is the worst.”