“I think having the opportunity to get inside the skin of people that operate outside the law and normal moral and ethical restraints, and then to go home afterwards leaving them on set, is pretty cathartic.”

I get to play out all kinds of bad behavior without anyone actually coming to harm.

For me, if the writing and – by extension – the subject matter and the characters are all good, it doesn’t matter if it’s film or TV. Each medium has great things going for it.

I like people and I like hearing their stories. The way that they deliver them is always very particular and I think that their accents are integral to that.

There’s something special about being on film sets; there’s an excitement; the people in every department are passionate about what they do.

As a younger actor coming up, I wanted to be in films.

[Playing] the bad guys tend to be fascinating. Figuring out what makes them do the things they do is what interests me.

In other words, leaders are visionaries and managers operate within those established visions.

However, we must not convert an inclination into an axiom that just as man’s perceptions cannot operate outside time and space, so his motivations cannot operate outside expediency;

Black magic operates most effectively in preconscious, marginal areas. Casual curses are the most effective.

[That form of] eloquence, the foster-child of licence, which fools call liberty. [Lat., Eloquentia, alumna licentiae, quam stulti libertatem vocabant.]

Remedies are more tardy in their operation than diseases.

Poetic talent doesn’t operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry.

I don’t operate on fear, and I don’t let fear control me.

If you’re horrible to me, I’m going to write a song about it, and you won’t like it. That’s how I operate.