“They looked at me and said, “We have no idea.” That’s why you have to make your own backstory.”

I came to The United States to see what would happen in 2000 after working for 20 years in Australia and asked my agent to look out for the nasty roles because I’d become famous for playing the nicest man in Australia.

The guys that write Once Upon a Time were major writers on Lost,

I’ve got to be in The Guinness Book of World Records for having the most heart attacks on television.

I think the most fun I ever had was playing King Arthur in Spamalot on the West End.

I decided Widmore was the evilest of the evil, but in the end, not even the writers knew.

When you’re tied to one show, you are very much at the mercy of the writers so you can suddenly get a script where you have a heart attack and die.

When you’re a regular on a TV show, they give you more of a backstory, so with these recurring gigs, you have to make up your own backstory.

So I wanted to play bad guys. But I’ve been doing that now for 13 years so when I was offered the chance to do some comedy, I grabbed it.

And we had lunch when I started on OUAT and the first thing I said to them was, “I spent five years on Lost, you have to tell me, was my character good or bad?”

My wife says I’m much happier when I’m not a regular on a TV show.

I think everybody really responds to the secret society aspect. This idea that you have to remain anonymous, and yet at the same time, you’re kind of saving the world.

America is not just a country, it’s an idea.

In ways that synchronize images, ideas, emotions, sounds, smells, ignorance, and knowledge.

Conservative values aren’t really reflected in the radical values of the NRA. And the other idea was that the NRA is not what you think it is

My advice to female directors is not to wait until you feel like your ideas have been pre-certified or until you think you’ve gotten some approval for them.

It becomes more and more difficult to avoid the idea of black men as subjects of not just racial profiling but of an insidious form of racial obliteration sanctioned by silence.

Be conscious first of thyself within, then think and act. All living thought is a world in preparation; all real act is a thought manifested. The material world exists because an idea began to play in divine self–consciousness.

Creativity gives hope that there can be a worthwhile idea.