“I’m always described as ‘cocksure’ or ‘with a swagger,’ and that bears no resemblance to who I feel like inside. I feel plagued by insecurity.”

I try to cast really good actors and give them a chance to do their very best work, give them as much time and space as they need.

One guy told me I was a great actor, I just would never be on the cover of a magazine.

I like the incongruity of how in Iran, these people we think of as being revolutionaries or fanatics or whatever are just as aware of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader as our people are back home.

When I look up at the screen and see myself I always have to laugh. Not because I think I’m doing a horrible job, quite the contrary, I just feel it’s so surreal to feel like one person can entertain so many at one time.

I’m much more interested in what an actor has to say about something substantial and important than who they’re dating or what clothes they’re wearing or some other asinine, insignificant aspect of their life.

I have three women in the house. I get to be wrong three times a day.

If I ever woke up with a dead hooker in my hotel room, Matt would be the first person I’d call.

Studios are used to have an investment in you, an actual, literal investment in an actor. You paid them some money, you had a contract with them and you were almost like a commodity.

It doesn’t matter how you get knocked down in life, because that’s going to happen. All that matters is that you gotta get up.

Sometimes the people we meet change us forever.

There’s a lot of romance to sort of living by your own rules and sort of not subscribing to what society tells you to do, but society pushes back pretty strongly, so there’s a lot of compromise that goes with that.

I’ve never held myself up particularly high when I had movies that worked, and I never held myself all that low when I had failures.

I like to think that if I were gay I would be out. Rupert Everett-style.

Directing is monumentally complicated and it’s a function of all the time you pay to it. I think it would be great to do a movie I’m not in, I could just eat Fritos and just say, ‘yeah, it’s good!’ Some day.

Sometimes I get insecure about being a real director because I look at the great directors, and they have such command. But maybe that keeps me critical of myself. Maybe it keeps me moving forward.

People ascribe a certain kind of silliness to the movie business. Everybody feels like, “In the movies, they do crazy stuff.”

It is not the object described that matters, but the light that falls on it.

I’m incapable of describing the feeling with which I left. I wouldn’t want it ever to be repeated, but I would have considered myself unfortunate if I’d never experienced it.

Two attributes of a poet, avidity of the eye and the desire to describe that which he sees.

I’d have to be really quick to describe clouds – a split second’s enough for them to start being something else.

Even boredom should be described with gusto. How many things are happening on a day when nothing happens?

This is an amazing thought: a God who is indescribable.

I would describe myself as emotional and highly strung. If something upsets me, it really upsets me. If something makes me angry, I get really angry. But it’s all very upfront. I can’t hide it. I’m also loyal and I hope I’m fun.

The words that appeared from my Ink where that could describe my love for you.