“I don’t want to ever think that I don’t know what to do. I want to deal with my own things, to perform my own roles, to be like, “I did this.””

To me, it’s all about inspiration. What gets me creatively excited is a challenge.

Be Impeccable with Your Word. Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean.

I’ve always been a night person. There’s a sense of virtue attached to getting up in the morning and doing things and starting the day, and I always felt bad for not being that person. But as I’ve gotten a bit older, now I’m completely okay with it. That’s just who I am.

I can deal with it now, but 13 is a tough age to be recognized and famous. It’s a tough age, period.

In terms of jobs, I’m an actor. There’s gotta’ be depth there. I’d never say yes to something just to play the hot guy. That’s not what I’m interested in.

I come from a family of pacifists, so it’s not like I was going to join the war. Sweden is not like the States or England where you might get sent to Afghanistan next month.

There’s something I love about how stark the contrast is between January and June in Sweden.

Eventually, I landed the job, and that was something that I felt transcended whatever other people would think of me.

At the time, number four of the Skarsgård actors. So in high school I majored in science and was like, “Maybe I’ll do something rebellious and become a doctor.”

I had no idea what I wanted to do. In my last two years of high school here happened to be these few scripts that I really responded to.

My height can be a problem. A lot of directors and photographers are sometimes not happy because I’m pretty tall and especially if I work with short actors the difference can be pretty massive.

When I read a script and have my first interaction with this character, do I feel like there’s something I’m gonna’ learn here? If I feel like it’s something I’ve done before, then what’s the incentive for me to do it?

I have three older brothers, and each one of them has chosen one of my parents’ education. Two of them are actors, and the third is a doctor as my mother is.

I’m always looking for something that’s real and that’s got meat on it. I think it’s artistic suicide if you’re too vain, or if you’re afraid to play ugly. I would never fall for that.

In my own personal life, God plays a great role in the risk, because I pray before I go into the operating room for every case, and I ask him to give me wisdom, to help me to know what to do – and not only for operating, but for everything.

I think I became my own stylist by not knowing any better.

To be ‘intellectual’ or ‘artistic’ or, in their own word, to be ‘highbrow,’ is to be priggish and of dubious virtue.

Concentrate on your job and you will forget your other troubles.

From the very beginning, I wrote to explain my own life to myself, and I invited any readers who chose to make the journey with me to join me on the high wire.

Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other.

Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

It’s nice to know there’s a big world with many perspectives. I tend to get so stuck in my own small world easily, and going out into the world reminds me that I’m not the center of the world – in a good way.