“Just because a lot of people know something nominal doesn’t make it important. A lot of people know what a pencil sharpener is, but that doesn’t make it the most important invention of the 20th century.”

If I ever woke up with a dead hooker in my hotel room, Matt would be the first person I’d call.

Studios are used to have an investment in you, an actual, literal investment in an actor. You paid them some money, you had a contract with them and you were almost like a commodity.

It doesn’t matter how you get knocked down in life, because that’s going to happen. All that matters is that you gotta get up.

Sometimes the people we meet change us forever.

There’s a lot of romance to sort of living by your own rules and sort of not subscribing to what society tells you to do, but society pushes back pretty strongly, so there’s a lot of compromise that goes with that.

I’ve never held myself up particularly high when I had movies that worked, and I never held myself all that low when I had failures.

I like to think that if I were gay I would be out. Rupert Everett-style.

Directing is monumentally complicated and it’s a function of all the time you pay to it. I think it would be great to do a movie I’m not in, I could just eat Fritos and just say, ‘yeah, it’s good!’ Some day.

Sometimes I get insecure about being a real director because I look at the great directors, and they have such command. But maybe that keeps me critical of myself. Maybe it keeps me moving forward.

People ascribe a certain kind of silliness to the movie business. Everybody feels like, “In the movies, they do crazy stuff.”

A lot of my shows in the past have been more theatrical than others, but you really get the bug for it when you direct on stage.

The best cure for a hangover is something one straight man can’t do for another straight man.

Nobody goes to a movie and watches the script. There is a lot of other stuff going on.

It wasn’t my childhood fantasy to work with Truffaut or be in obscure films. I like Midnight Run better than I like The Bicycle Thief. It was films like Die Hard and Bladerunner that made me want to be an actor.

I’ve seen high and lows. When things go well that doesn’t make me feel like some genius. Nor will I allow the next disappointment to make me feel like a complete failure.

Yes, I’m going to be the President of the United States. You know why? You think you can get chicks by being in the movies? You can really get chicks by being the President.

Half the world does not know how the other half lives.

Cats know not how to pardon.

What would you do if you knew for sure that no one would ever find out?

True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.

To know the pains of power, we must go to those who have it; to know its pleasures, we must go to those who are seeking it: the pains of power are real, its pleasures imaginary.

You are already free. You only have to know and realize this truth.

It’s a strange thing, you have said it thousands of times I am sure…you will never know what you can do until you try. However the sad truth is, that most people never try anything until they know they can do it.

Happiness is the natural state for someone who knows that there’s nothing to know.