“I let a tarantula walk across my hand, and I ate rat soup.”

I wouldn’t live in California. All that sun makes you sterile.

I don’t really worry about the size of the part much any more.

In the midst of the sense of tragedy or loss, sometimes laughter is not only healing, it’s a way of experiencing the person that you’ve lost again.

Be brave enough to live creatively . . . what you’ll discover will be wonderful: yourself.

Begin challenging your own assumptions.

But if you consider how abnormal their behavior is, then you are led to the hypothesis that almost all men are suffering from ‘testosterone poisoning.’

What I can’t completely understand is most other people’s fascination with what the famous among us do with their lips and the rest of their bodies.

Don’t be upset that it takes a long, long time to find wisdom because nobody knows where wisdom can be found.

Awards can give you a tremendous amount of encouragement to keep getting better, no matter how young or old you are.

Jean Paul Sartre says in “No Exit” that hell is other people. Well, our task in life is to make it heaven. Or at least earth.

Kids are natural scientists.

As I am becoming older, the only thing that speeds up is time.

I guess in a world uncomfortable with uncertainty, an unbeliever must be an atheist, and possibly an infidel.

It’s really clear to me that you can’t hang onto something longer than its time. Ideas lose certain freshness, ideas have a shelf life, and sometimes they have to be replaced by other ideas.

[You have to be] willing to be changed by the person you’re listening to, where you’re not just waiting for a pause so you can say your thing, but you’re actually letting them have an effect on you if they can.

I have a final word of advice to our students. If you work very, very hard, this is the kind of actor, writer and director you may turn out to be, and if you work extra hard, this is the kind of person you may turn out to be.

That’s a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.

The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you.

Don’t I yearn for the days when a draw across the throat made f**king resolution.

I know there’s a big bad world out there, but I rarely come across it.

Do you remember the church across the sands? You stood outside and planned to travel the lands, where the pilgrims go.

Russia has cultivated an opaque network of patronage across the region that it uses to influence and direct decision- making.

I love it when I come across a word I don’t know. And I would never treat my audience like they weren’t smart enough to come along with me.

I wish I could say I’m an architect and planned it this way, foresaw doing all these things, but honestly, I’ve been lucky that things have come across my path and they’ve worked out well for me.