“I always want to confuse people in terms of any kind of image and be unpredictable in any kind of movie I make.”

All of the muscles were gone, so that was a real tough time of rebuilding all of that. But you have a deadline, you have an obligation. You’ve said that you will commit to this part, and I just can’t live with myself for not really giving it as much as I can.

I’ve had some painful experiences in my life, but I feel like I’m trivializing them by using them for a scene in a movie. I don’t want to do that. It just makes me feel kind of dirty for having done that.

It’s very easy to leave when things go wrong, but to stick around and to basically give life to a town because of everything that it gave you generation after generation after generation, that to me is what defines a true American.

I always leave that for other people to decide, because some of the things I consider to be disasters are some people’s favorite movies. And that’s what I like so much, is that you never know. Something intrigues somebody and means nothing to somebody else.

Sometimes the truth isn’t good enough. Sometimes people have got to have their faith rewarded.

I have a fear of being boring.

We’re all conning ourselves, one way or another, just to get through life.

If everyone really knew what a jerk I am in real life, I wouldn’t be so adored in the slightest.

I never want to feel that I’m playing it safe.

I would have been very happy just cruising around and enjoying the unexpected. I’ve never been ambitious.

Research can be interesting, but it can be pointless as well. The realities of making a movie often are not conducive with that. I’m not knocking it. I love doing research myself, but I admit it doesn’t always add to the performance.

I tend to think you’re fearless when you recognize why you should be scared of things, but do them anyway.

It’s not who I am underneath but what I do that defines me.

Planning a career, I always find a tricky thing, because I don’t have much of a plan, really.

The interesting thing about a movie is the movie.

A teenager usually wants to try to get people to notice him in some way, to feel like someone gives a damn. Me, all that attention, I just wanted to fade into the background. Be invisible. Disappear.

Never confuse movement with progress. Because you can run in place and not get anywhere.

A smile or a tear has no nationality; joy and sorrow speak alike to all nations, and they, above all the confusion of tongues, proclaim the brotherhood of man.

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.

I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.

Religion is a system of wishful illusions together with a disavowal of reality, such as we find nowhere else but in a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion. Religion’s eleventh commandment is “Thou shalt not question.

I am in a charming state of confusion.

I never said most of the things I said. Then again, I might have said ’em, but you never know.

You have to systematically create confusion, it sets creativity free. Everything that is contradictory creates life