“I feel like casting is the most important aspect of making movies.”

I recognize that Hollywood is not about seniority. Often it’s not even a meritocracy. It’s about what you did yesterday. You have a couple of misses, and suddenly it’s impossible to find a hit. So the swings are gigantic. But I’ve always understood it as such, and navigated it as such.

If you think Hollywood is depressing and corrupt, politics is really depressing and corrupt — and fueled even more than Hollywood by money — if that’s possible.

Affleck was the bomb in Phantoms.

I just feel like sometimes I’m a force to be dealt with. My talents are sometimes overused and also sometimes underused. It’s not easy being me.

Online gambling is very seductive and very illusory. It can seem like a really good idea. It can seem like what people told you to work hard and get ahead, but when someone shows you something and it’s too good to be true, it probably is.

No matter how much you change, you still got to pay the price for the things you’ve done.

I dyed my hair for photo tests… I kept it because when am I ever going to be blond again?

I grew up in a home environment where I wasn’t getting esteem for anything I did.

No matter what you’re doing, if you’re trying to make a movie, you need to be working with people that are really good and who make you better.

I have a good instinct for what’s real and what’s not. I don’t have to second-guess myself.

The trap for an actor is that you become too successful at what you’re trying to do, and you can find yourself stuck there.

I hate the whole reluctant sex-symbol thing. It’s such bull. You see these dudes greased up, in their underwear, talking about how they don’t want to be a sex symbol.

I’m trying to make people feel welcome and feel valued.

I try new things and give myself permission to fail and experiment because only that way can you get really successful.

I really think that everybody would like to be an actor. Why wouldn’t they? It’s great work if you can get it. The one thing that prevents most people from saying, ‘I’m just gonna go to Hollywood!’ is that it seems unrealistic.

A sale is made on every call you make. Either you sell the client some stock or he sells you a reason he can’t. Either way a sale is made, the only question is: Who is gonna close?

Where she offers the kind of insights into the spiritual aspects of Michael Jackson’s creative artistry that mainstream media mostly ignores.

One very important aspect of motivation is the willingness to stop and to look at things that no one else has bothered to look at. This simple process of focusing on things that are normally taken for granted is a powerful source of creativity.

In every aspect of life, purity and holiness, cleanliness and refinement, exalt the human condition.Even in the physical realm, cleanliness will conduce to spirituality.

Pleasure and pain are only aspects of the mind. Our essential nature is happiness.

Strength is but one aspect of power.

I’m not sure that my films show the reality of life in Iran; we show different aspects of life. Iran is a very extensive and expansive place, and sometimes, even for us who live there, some of the realities are very hard to comprehend.

It’s really a sad story, and I liked that. The songs on this album talk about relationships in every aspect.

I’m playing the game because I love it. But I’m also playing it for my family. You play for the glory, but you play for your family, too.