“The people I’ve encountered who are really dangerous in my life don’t go around with their fangs drawn – they are dangerous because of the way they interpret what’s going on.”

Acting is broad enough a church that you can pick your races, decide which way you want to go at different times.I think that the story and circumstance tends to dictate the most and then what you do with your own approach after that.

One of the things that I found very confronting in my early working life was that people thought I was some sensitive doe-eyed lovelorn boy, because they’d seen me do that a couple of times. What tends to happen is you get a run of similar roles.

You can certainly extend your adolescence. There’s people that are very good at extending it indefinitely.

People don’t know who I am, and that’s not a bad thing at all from my end.

At 15 I had moved out of my parents’ place, and my options were looking pretty narrow. But I had this acting thing and I just wanted to be able to keep going because it was really good. That was all I wanted.

There were the usual types of things that happen, in a production, like logistical bullshit, and this and that and the other. That’s the sort of stuff that happened. But I never felt, in a creative sense, that we were ever veering into a place that I hadn’t signed on for.

I mean, there’s a sense wherein you skip a part of childhood, too, when you start working at that age I did; I was out working and out of home at 15, paying my own way in the world.

I’m very interested in the history of Christianity, and what I can say for sure is that the Catholics and the Jesuits and stuff were very big on teaching and on learning.

As an outsider in America, you do see the kind of hypocrisy that’s rampant there.

I’ve spent various periods of my career being thought of as various things, various degrees of substance and ideas.

I think now there’s much more of a confessional culture. That’s not my bag. I come from a slightly older school of thought: ‘give ’em nothin.’ You don’t plead guilty.

There’s very little different between the way the government operates in America and the way criminals do.

If you ride like lightning, you’re gonna crash like thunder.

Acting is a bit of a heart and soul exercise with me. It’s kind of all I’ve got.

There are two things: 1) what things one does in the world, and 2) what family one has. There’s the two really tangible things that can stay.

Crewing and being on film sets is kind of like being in the carnival, with carnie folks.

I feel more like I’m a person who has so much to offer in different capacities that it would be a danger for me not to give myself a chance to spread my wings in all different directions.

One can unite the French only under the threat of danger. One cannot simply bring together a nation that produces 265 kinds of cheese.

He could tell she was a little risky but he often enjoyed the taste of danger.

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

If you think that American imperialism and its globalised, capitalist form is the most dangerous thing in the world, that means you don’t think the Islamic Republic of Iran or North Korea or the Taliban is as bad.

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.

The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.

And once you’re unafraid with death, I think your capacity for violence is immediately increased. Once you’re unafraid of death, you are a very, very dangerous adversary.