“Cameras aren’t guns. They can’t really hurt you.”

The challenge for me as an actor is if you become a celebrity, you don’t meet strangers anymore. And strangers are where we have our anonymity. And I believe it’s essential for the soul to be anonymous, especially if you’re going to be an actor.

I’m not arrogant enough to look back on my career and criticize my choices. It’s really not my place.

Don’t say you can do something when you really can’t.

I’m a golfer, and what are the two sports you can do till you drop? Golf and surfing. They’re great for you limber-wise, they’re great for you health-wise, and they put you in sweet locations.

I’m for gay power, straight power, male power, female power; everybody should feel empowered without oppressing anyone who’s different.

See, ‘A Time to Kill’ was the one I got famous off of. Big ka-boom, over one weekend. After that, I did films that I really wanted to do.

If you want your hair to be thicker, cut it when the moon is about to be full – a heavy, full, waxing moon. Do not cut it when the moon’s waning.

There’s a gap between what I want to do, what I do on camera, and what gets edited. Right? So the goal is to try and close the gaps.

A creep is someone who claims he’s one thing but he’s actually another.

I’m one of the most adaptable guys I know in as much as travelling is my favourite thing to do in life. With every place I go.

I have my own vocabulary. I love linguistics. That surprises people.

My rule is to break one sweat a day.

You want to be a writer? Start writing. You want to be a filmmaker? Start shooting stuff on your phone right now.

At the same time, when I can go off with a backpack or off on a surfboard or even off on a run somewhere in the woods – that’s where I’m really happy.

I don’t dabble and spend much mind or time dealing with, I don’t know, people’s perceptions of me. I truly don’t.

I was – my big thing was I went to put super unleaded in my truck for the first time.

When you’re acting for a camera, it keeps taking and never giving back.

The camera can film my face but until it captures my soul, you don’t have a movie.

Cameras, in short, were clocks for seeing, and perhaps in me someone very old still hears in the photographic mechanism the living sound of the wood.

If I could live my life all over I’d do everything the same; the film in my camera would remain the same; there’s no way lord, to leave this love behind.

While the cameras are rolling, I rarely look directly at the actors, but focus my gaze somewhere else.

For truly cinematic expression, the camera and the microphone must be able to cross both fire and water.

The camera is interested in what you are thinking as opposed to just what you are doing or saying.

I didn’t go to film school. I was never an assistant or trainee on a film. I had not seen all those cameras. So I think it gave me a lot of freedom.