“I want to work with intelligent people and look for scripts that I think are intelligent and surprising.”

There’s no conversation more boring than talking about what it’s really like to live in Newport and how the show compares to the real thing. I just don’t care.

If I don’t direct a movie at some point, I’ve failed personally.

It’s bad writing, however naturalistic it’s written, that’s where you have to do your best acting.

My best jokes are so cheap. All I do is say things sarcastically.

I worry that I can come off smarmy. I wonder if I was listening to myself if I’d want to kick my own ass.

Really, as long as I am working and have diversity, I am happy.

And in a world without heroes, as the movie trailer voice-over guy might say, the slightly awkward can be slightly cool.

I like great directors who are scarce. Prolific ones are nice too but for me, there’s something about the scarcity that makes it all the more valuable.

Most of the time, my favorite drama has comedy in it as well. I think most good dramas have comedy in there. And all of the dramatic actors I look up to are also very funny.

I have been in teen shows for years, so doing that stuff – kissing – is kind of commonplace and not a big deal. It was way more cool just because it was Meg Ryan.

I am super-proud to have a sort of famous character in my background that if you’re a certain age, he was probably a part of your youth. I think that’s pretty cool.

I do think that sometimes you can invent more palatable or digestible reasons versions or reasons, when perhaps you don’t want to admit the truth to yourself, and sometimes we deceive ourselves – along with others – about our reasons and motives.

Welcome to a life of insecurity and paralyzing self-doubt.

I wish I came from a more pure place. I don’t have something to say from the bottom of my soul. I just know how to take stuff I like and repackage it in a slightly different way.

Transitioning to being an unemployed film actor is different, but it’s fun and I’ve been looking forward to it for a while.

I started a band [Big Japan] for fun. These sticks break easily, but they feel good.

Human being is both being in the world and living in the world. Living involves responsible understanding of one’s role in relation to all other beings.

(People) can never attain fulfillment, or sense of meaning, unless it is shared, unless it pertains to other human beings.

Try to cultivate love of God. You are born as a human being only to attain divine love.

Overall, my books represent a kind of shared communion and meditation with my fellow human beings.

Movies are only the result of where we are as human beings.

What I would like you always to do is what I try humbly to do myself, that is, never to say or to do anything which would wound the feelings or the self-respect of any human being

Abortion can never be safe. Any procedure where “success” means the killing of another human being can certainly not be safe.

A movie is about human beings, about humanity.