Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If you looked in magazines ... you never see me in those out-on-the-town pages. I'm either at home playing with the kids or I'm working.
Tower Records is like a temple to me. I'll stay there for hours. Nobody can shop for records with me. It drives them out of their minds.
My mom was a psychic. And there's a movie called The Gift that I'd written years ago with Cate Blanchett which is loosely based on my mom.
If you're going to take care of your kids and pay for your house and do something good for adults, you have to do something on television now.
I've lived in California for half of my life. It's weird, everyone thinks of me as this guy who's from the South ... I'm really a Californian.
Comedy is harder than drama, because with comedy you're expecting a result..you make them laugh. [If] they ain't laughing then you're screwed.
If you're 25 years old dressed up like Superman at a comic book convention, that's great. If you're 78 and you're doing it, something's wrong.
You can get famous for doing something stupid and empty, but you do something stupid and empty and you're already famous, you lose your career.
At my dad's funeral I didn't cry when my dad died. I did it years later when I forgave him, which I've totally forgiven him and I loved my dad.
I'm not really a full-time director, I just like to direct the things that I write because I think I'm going to know it better than someone else.
When I was growing up, when I was 11 years old I was listening to The Mothers of Invention. You know, I mean I was a Frank Zappa fan in Arkansas.
When I was coming up, if you were on a TV show, that meant something was wrong with your career. Now it means something's right with your career.
Now the idea in the movie world is to make things the same. And in the TV world, the idea is to do something different, so... that's why I'm here!
One of the greatest things about getting older as an actor is that you settle into who you are and you don't begrudge everyone else what they have.
I got in drama class in high school and I only got in there because there were girls and I thought maybe I could make a grade above a C in something.
The independent film business is pretty much gone. Now you can do it in a format where you actually get to develop a character over a period of time.
I think television's amazing, and I'm going to do more of it. I love it. I think it's a great place to be, but I'm still going to keep doing movies too.
I've never heard of anybody smoking a joint and going on a rampage. It makes you lie around on the floor and look at the ceiling. What's wrong with that?
You read something and you just feel this makes sense. And sometimes before you even read it you have a feeling that yeah, I'm probably gonna do this one.
People have made sure of that, that you can't shock anybody anymore. It's not just because of movies and TV. It's because of what's happening in the world.
People a lot of times say that you know it must be hard to direct yourself. That's a myth. It's easier to direct yourself. There's no middle man, you know.
I know it's boring to say this but I always start with the script. I mean if it's well written and it's a character that I haven't necessarily played before.
I generally have lyrics first, but you can't help that when you're writing lyrics you start to get a melody in your head. So they come kind of simultaneously.
When you weigh 135 pounds and you're telling people who are 6'4" and 250 pounds to get out of your way, how do you do that? Well, a lot of that is in the eyes.
[The lyrics and melody] usually come a little simultaneously, but I would say the lyrics are first; usually I have the idea for a story in my head, or few lines.
I've gone through my periods. I've read the Bible completely, all the way through twice. I did it once when I was about 20 and I did it again when I was about 30.
I'm an actor. I'm not a performer. I'm not like a song and dance guy who can take a cane and a hat and do it. I would just you know. That's why I never did commercials.
You never know what an audience is going to think about something. The ones that the audience doesn't get, I tend to let them go. I don't like to dwell on them too much.
I'm kind of sad and happy all the time. Just kind of like feeling, you know, full of life and confident, and at the same time terrified. I'm all of those things at once.
I think Americana music is music that is generally more singer/songwriter oriented. It has more to do with the songwriting. The music, it's more like stories set to music.
People want the truth but they only want the truth so they can talk bad about you on the blog or on television. They want you to tell them the truth and it screws everybody.
I've watched other directors as an actor and I picked up little things here and there about cameras, [but] I wouldn't consider myself the guy you'd want to hire to do Star Trek.
I have type AB- blood, which is the rarest blood type. It's less than 1 percent of the whole population of the world, and it means that you don't have as many digestive enzymes.
If you want anybody to have a different voice, you really have to visualize and hear the voices of all these people. Sometimes when I write with specific actors in mind, it helps.
I always have an idea before we even start the movie because if you hire the wrong person, within a couple of days you're going to know that and you're going to be really panicked.
If someone is talking to you and tells you that you ought to do something, and you can tell they mean it, those are the scary people. Those are the people you want to watch out for.
When I saw that show Lost I learned something. Other than one sort of big dude if you're in an airplane crash only models survive. So you know sit next to somebody pretty, but anyhow.
I'm really influenced by Southern novelists, not many movie people. More like John Faulkner, William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, Flannery O'Connor, John Steinbeck, and people like that.
Baby boomers don't go out as much, they aren't interacting with each other and they would rather stay home and watch TV. That's the audience for a guy like me, unless I'm doing 'Bad Santa.'
I used to put that I studied with Stella Adler on my resume. I never met Stella Adler. But if you told a casting director you studied with Stella Adler all the sudden they'd let you in the door.
Normally you're 21 years old and you look like Tom Cruise and you do a couple underwear commercials first and then you're a movie star. That didn't happen for me. So it was all quite overwhelming.
The only times you'll see me in terms of the movie business is when I have to go to the premieres of my own movies. I don't go to see ones that aren't mine because I don't even like going to mine.
Acting is playing - it's actually going out on a playground with the other kids and being in the game, and I need that. Writing satisfies that part of myself that longs to sit in my room and dream.
If you've written it you know exactly; whoever you're playing if you've written it you already know it. As a matter of fact, you've already made the movie if you wrote it. You've made it in your head.
I've been married five times, and people think that's some bizarre thing, yet I've got buddies who refuse to get married and have sex with 15 people a week. I'm like "Which is better?" At least I was trying.
I always wished there was somebody like the Coen Brothers and they appeared. And so yeah, my favorite role that I've ever done was in The Man Who Wasn't There. That's my very favorite character I've ever played.
A lot of people are doing television now. Great, legendary actors are doing movies on cable and stuff now, and you can't blame them, because they're still doing adult dramas and adult comedies on those stations.
Pushing Tin,' I went to air traffic control school in Toronto for that. Passed with flying colors, by the way. If I ever become an air traffic controller and I'm the guy in charge of your plane, you're in good hands.
When I was coming up in the '80s television, if you were on television that meant either you were a young actor just coming up like I was, or you were an older actor whose career was over and you had to go on television.
I don't see anything wrong with a cell phone. That's great. You have a flat tire in the middle of the night; it works better than digging in your pocket for a quarter and looking for a payphone eight miles down the road.