“It’s not a science when you are judging art, but we’d be remiss to say you can’t look at something and say, ‘This is more well done than that.’”

My rule is to break one sweat a day.

You want to be a writer? Start writing. You want to be a filmmaker? Start shooting stuff on your phone right now.

At the same time, when I can go off with a backpack or off on a surfboard or even off on a run somewhere in the woods – that’s where I’m really happy.

I don’t dabble and spend much mind or time dealing with, I don’t know, people’s perceptions of me. I truly don’t.

I was – my big thing was I went to put super unleaded in my truck for the first time.

I like a good pair of jeans, but I also like putting on a nice tux.

The best advice comes from people who don’t give advice.

Or people say, ‘Oh, man, you just roll out of bed and do that.’ The work is to make it look effortless. That’s the hard part.

I’ve done films where we don’t rehearse, and I’ve done films where we heavily rehearse. I like rehearsals.

I will say this: one of the things that is a pain when you’re expecting children is how much advice unsolicited people give you when you’re not asking for it.

When someone bestows something on you, no matter how true it is, when someone says, ‘Sexiest Man Alive,’ I’m honestly going, ‘Thank you. Right on.’ For me, it’s never canceled out anything, it’s never made me go, ‘Does this make me less talented of an actor?’

There are no rules. And if it comes down to me versus that weed I’m trying to pull out of the ground that doesn’t want to come out? I know I’ll win.

I’ve read a lot of really great characters in some really crappy stories, where I said, like, ‘Boy I could shine here, but the story sucks.’ I don’t want to be part of that.

I have some good friends of my own who happen to be gay, and when it comes to gay, straight, or whatever, I’m for anything life-affirmative.

There’s two sorts of fear: one you embrace and one you should listen to and turn the other way.

There aren’t many things that are universally cool, and it’s cool not to litter. I’d never do it.

Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of men. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter.

Music is more objective, I think, than a lot of art is, but a surprising amount of it is cultural.

There is perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly.

If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.

Certain though I am – and ever more certain – that I must press on in life as though Christ awaited me at the term of the universe, at the same time I feel no special assurance of the existence of Christ. Believing is not seeing. As much as anyone, I imagine, I walk in the shadows of faith.

Humanity is still advancing; and it will probably continue to advance for hundreds of thousands of years more, always on condition that we know how to keep the same line of advance as our ancestors towards ever greater consciousness and complexity.

The more attention you give to the paparazzi, the more it just, like, validates everything . . .

I’m more of a cringer at first and when it is years down the road and out of my way, I can actually appreciate it somehow.