“I’d love to remain a secret and still work, but I also want people to see the movies I’m in and get a higher profile because of that. I like to think that as long as you continue choosing diverse roles, you can avoid becoming predictable.”

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.

The end of life is not to be happy, nor to achieve pleasure and avoid pain, but to do the will of God, come what may.

Let us study things that are no more. It is necessary to understand them, if only to avoid them.

The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn and feel and change and grow and love and live.

Change is actually what you need to avoid.

When we attempt to exercise power or control over someone else, we cannot avoid giving that person the very same power or control over us.

The real test is not whether you avoid failure, because you won’t. It’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it.

It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live.

A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.