“People have said, ‘You don’t need to do any more biopics. You don’t need to play any more real people.’ I don’t agree with that.”

I wasn’t a comic book geek as a kid. I read some, but it was just like, ‘Oh, I have this comic book here.’ It wasn’t like I was collecting them.

When you’re doing a character, you want to know the full landscape. You want to know them spiritually, mentally and physically.

I’m not really interested in being a superhero. That’s not a box I’ve been trying to check off.

Baseball players need strength but also the ability to make fast-paced, explosive movements, so their training is all about strengthening the tendons around the bone and the joint so you don’t tear the muscles from the bones.

I got scars from every film I’ve done, every TV show.

Guys are natural problem solvers – they like to have strategies.

We live in a world where people can ridicule you at the push of the button. They can question you at the push of a button.

Our lives depend on vote.

You think you can’t change the world? You can.

One of the first things I was taught as an actor was, ‘Don’t judge the character.’

Nobody has to give me permission to write.

They should probably have a James Brown aerobic tape. You would lose a lot of weight.

When you play characters, you shouldn’t just be putting on their characteristics – you should be finding it inside yourself.

You’re not free unless you can show the good and the bad, all sides of them. So to me, when I play a character, it’s important that I can show every aspect of them.

I was raised in a sort of village. I have a huge family, and I think there is strength in that. It helped me to deal with some of the complications of living in the South because I always felt like I belonged, no matter what.

I try to look at every role the same way, regardless of whether the character is real or the character is a fantasy. I always start from myself, because you have to know yourself first.

Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all things one and from one all things.

I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues.

I know who I am, I know what I can and can’t do. I know what I will and won’t do. I know what I’m capable of and I don’t agree to do things that I don’t think I can pull off.

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

Thinking isn’t agreeing or disagreeing. That’s voting.

Science is interesting, and if you don’t agree you can fuck off.

In short, numbers are accepted as evidence when they agree with preconceptions, but not when they don’t.

What is history? The lie that everyone agrees on.