“I had no idea what I wanted to do. In my last two years of high school here happened to be these few scripts that I really responded to.”

To me, it’s all about inspiration. What gets me creatively excited is a challenge.

Be Impeccable with Your Word. Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean.

I’ve always been a night person. There’s a sense of virtue attached to getting up in the morning and doing things and starting the day, and I always felt bad for not being that person. But as I’ve gotten a bit older, now I’m completely okay with it. That’s just who I am.

I can deal with it now, but 13 is a tough age to be recognized and famous. It’s a tough age, period.

In terms of jobs, I’m an actor. There’s gotta’ be depth there. I’d never say yes to something just to play the hot guy. That’s not what I’m interested in.

I come from a family of pacifists, so it’s not like I was going to join the war. Sweden is not like the States or England where you might get sent to Afghanistan next month.

There’s something I love about how stark the contrast is between January and June in Sweden.

Eventually, I landed the job, and that was something that I felt transcended whatever other people would think of me.

At the time, number four of the Skarsgård actors. So in high school I majored in science and was like, “Maybe I’ll do something rebellious and become a doctor.”

I don’t want to ever think that I don’t know what to do. I want to deal with my own things, to perform my own roles, to be like, “I did this.”

My height can be a problem. A lot of directors and photographers are sometimes not happy because I’m pretty tall and especially if I work with short actors the difference can be pretty massive.

When I read a script and have my first interaction with this character, do I feel like there’s something I’m gonna’ learn here? If I feel like it’s something I’ve done before, then what’s the incentive for me to do it?

I have three older brothers, and each one of them has chosen one of my parents’ education. Two of them are actors, and the third is a doctor as my mother is.

I’m always looking for something that’s real and that’s got meat on it. I think it’s artistic suicide if you’re too vain, or if you’re afraid to play ugly. I would never fall for that.

The loner – it can have a real impact on the art when they realize, I have friends, I’m married, or I have kids. That’s certainly happened to me.

Book clubs are the best thing that has happened to the world of publishing.

Don’t worry about bad things that haven’t happened yet. It will save you a lot of anxiety.

I think there’s a lot of evolution that’s happened in intangible ways, in terms of how I think about the work or how I plan it out.

I had to find a way to be more honest about what happened. And it wasn’t fun to write, even though the poems aren’t 100% autobiographical.

We’re a long way from the embargo ending. Look at what just happened with the rollback of Obama’s Cuba policies. Two idiot congressmen convinced our idiot president to make it harder on Cubans on the island.

I knew all the time I was going to get through the war. It was completely irrational, a silly idea, but I was not going to lie down and get myself killed. I was going to get out of it.

I mean, nothing ever really happened with ’em, but I enjoy getting a young band into the studio and guiding them, and making them feel at ease.