“You need to be as clean of a slate as you can be, as an actor. You have to try to be open to every experience.”

And once you’re unafraid with death, I think your capacity for violence is immediately increased. Once you’re unafraid of death, you are a very, very dangerous adversary.

I really feel actors should try and do as much diverse work as possible to try and keep it interesting.

It’s obvious that if you’re going to play a character you need to amass information about that person and about their environment or their era that they’re in and use as little or as much as necessary

I don’t think they’d ever make a movie about Chuck Baker but I’d love to play Chuck Baker

I like being at home with my music and my books. I’ve done all the partying, I’ve done enough partying for four or five people as a young fella. But now I like the quiet life.

From a very young age I had an ambition to be a musician, and to do that professionally. That’s what I pursued until I was about 20, playing in bands that were taken pretty seriously at that stage.

I think you fall out of love with theater while you’re doing your eighth show of your eighteenth week and your body is saying, “Please make this end.”

I’m pretty adamant to do an American accent because you get it immediately.

For me, drama is conflict.

I come from a long line of teachers. Not only did I not go into the family business; I had an aborted law career and I played in bands. ‘Disco Pigs’ was my first professional acting experience.

I’m not interested in a good man’s life. I’m interested in contradiction.

I’ve never done a film for the money.

All I’ve tried to do as an actor is follow the good writing. That’s been my main drive. It’s not always possible, so when you do come upon it, like when I came upon this, you realize pretty quickly this is something you need to be involved with.

It’s always nice to be challenged.

You’re an actor who’s Irish, not an Irish actor. And you shouldn’t be limited by your extraction.

You take the job very seriously and between action and cut, that’s where your focus should be. And then there’s a lot of levity in between and a lot of good fun.

What drains your spirit drains your body. What fuels your spirit fuels your body.

Work is doing it. Discipline is doing it every day. Diligence is doing it well every day.

Money… is like a beautiful thoroughbred horse – very powerful & always in action, but unless this horse is trained when very young, it will be an out-of-control & dangerous animal when it grows to maturity.

We should think of those who were famous for their good deeds or their bad deeds; did their fame raise them one single degree in the sight of Allah. Did it win them a reward that they had not already won by their actions during their life?

If your purpose is to liberate yourself and others into love and freedom, then you should do whatever magnifies the love and freedom in your life and in the lives of whom your actions affect.

Liberty is no heirloom. It requires the daily bread of self-denial, the salt of law and, above all, the backbone of acknowledging responsibility for our deeds.

People want to psychoanalyze me, but the fact is, I’m not that complicated. I’m pretty straightforward. And I’m not all that self-reflective, because I tend to be a doer.

I don’t make big grand gestures, generally.