“I don’t choose to insulate myself in engaging in real life. Hence, the public kind of almost knows me as much through my real life that they see through the rag mags.”

What’s the biggest compliment is if I read a review and it’s exactly what I wrote down in my diary before ever filming it. That’s really cool. That’s the biggest signifier of closing the gaps.

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.

It is remarkable that men, when they differ in what they think considerable, will be apt to differ in almost everything else; their difference begets contradiction; contradiction begets heat; heat quickly rises into resentment, rage, and ill-will; thus they differ in affections, as they differ in judgment.

I really feel the novel has certain conveniences about it and has something so fundamental about it you could almost say that as long as there is paper, there is going to be the novel.

To destroy a man is difficult, almost as difficult as to create one: it has not been easy, nor quick, but you Germans have succeeded. Here we are, docile under your gaze; from our side you have nothing more to fear; no acts of violence, no words of defiance, not even a look of judgment.

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

When i’m wasted, i can almost forget who i am,” he said, his smile fading slightly. “i know i’m still there, but only barely. It’s a good place to be.” he tipped back the thermos, eyes on the dark sea straight ahead

I had that. I could almost feel the miles between us shrinking, as if we were at two ends of some invisible elastic thread.

Painting is something that you need to do, if not every day, then certainly most days. It is almost like being a pianist: if you stop, you lose something.

Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.