With 'The Exorcist,' a lot of things went into it. I hadn't seen the show until they asked me, and then I checked the show out and thought it was very well done.

I think the ability to emphasize is, in large part, what makes me a man and not a boy.

Sometimes I feel indie directors are in the game so they can make a film to get hired to do a big film - that we're all doing this person's reel.

I like that guy Matthew Perry a lot.

Culture is this thing that exists apart from our real life but is something we all have tacitly agreed to in America. And what film and television do, particularly in this country, is lay out the characters involved in this invisible agreement and dictate who and what can participate.

To be able to communicate with people on the other side of the globe is interesting, in an instant.

I grew up watching the Lakers.

The thing about kissing men - how do people stand it? The stubble is maddening.

I just didn't see anyone on TV who looked like me, and then I saw George Takei being cool and piloting the spaceship on television.

Part of my mission as an actor has been to define what an American is.

The more roles there are, the more actors there are.

I didn't think it was possible for Asians to be actors.

People expect me to be funnier.

I personally would love to see Harold and Kumar with children. I think that would be hilarious.

I wanted to explore Korean-American characters. And 'Columbus' did address that. The father-son dynamic felt very real to me.

Whenever I meet a Korean, I ask about their immigration history.

I'm not an activist, I'm an actor. I don't want to be an activist.

There's only so much I can do to effect change - and really, the thing that I can do that's most effective is to work and to do good work. That, I feel, is speaking out in its own way.

I want to walk the bases - I want to do all the actor-y stuff.

I'd like to be in a Western.

When Mindy Kaling asks, I try my best to say yes.

My wife and I were worried, when we had our firstborn, about how he was going to think of himself in a mostly white neighborhood. Particularly Asian men, I feel, we suffer more than Asian women, because we're told we're not worth anything in general.

I love being on my bike, but I don't consider that a sport: it's too pleasant.

If you want to know why the coast is such an inspirational place, ask Herman Melville, Jack London, Nordhoff and Hall, Robert Louis Stevenson or Joseph Conrad. It's a glimpse of eternity. It invites rumination, the relentless whisper of the tide against the shore.

Lyrics became important for a while in the late Seventies. Patti Smith was a poet and a rock star, as much one as the other, the distinctions were a bit blurred and then you get swept up in it. Punk poet, it's a good enough term.

The only casual item I own is a Levi's jacket.

I don't think 'Citizen Kane' stands more than one watch. Power corrupts. Who didn't know that?

All the best musicians started out in church; Jesus invented rock 'n' roll.

To make the hips the focal point of a pair of trousers is, to me, a fashion mistake.

The greatest threat to any artist is surrounding themselves with people who love everything they do.

Well, I've obviously been a great source of inspiration to the academic population of Salford! They're citing me as a major contribution to their upward trajectory!

My look was based on the Madison Avenue guy who's just lost his job. Ivy League suit a bit scuzzed up, an outgrown layer cut and five o'clock shadow.

I don't have secrets, my life's an open book.

You know how the Marvel Comics superheroes formed themselves into the Justice League of America - Batman, Flash and the rest. Why did Superman join? He never needed any help.

Happiness is the target one only has to aim at in order to miss.

If you don't like The Ramones, you don't like rock 'n'roll. They're like The Beach Boys without the sea.

Where's the mileage in an autobiography? Anyone who writes one inevitably casts themselves as a hero, and I'm not about to do that.

I hate chickpeas. I like hummus but I ate that before I realised it was made out of chickpeas.

I write with pen and paper. I don't have a mobile or computer, because I know how great they are. If I did, I'd never leave the house - you'd find me in six months, dead under a pile of pizza boxes.

Not everyone is prepared for fame, not even at the level I got it. One minute you're just a face in the crowd, next minute everyone wants a piece of you.

There is a certain sentimental vibe in my home town of Manchester, which you would sort of expect.

If there's a gene, I got it from my ma. Her writing has this effortless quality.

I wanted to get rich, like anyone from my background.

I ain't got a credit card, a mobile phone or a computer. Call me sentimental. I think that's a whole world of trouble I ain't got no business setting foot in. And you know what? It feels good.

Find a poet whose style you like, emulate that style, then deal with things that you know about - don't waste your time looking for your own style.' I wish I could remember who told me that, because I'd like to congraulate him. I've emulated all the old guys - Tennyson, Alexander Pope.

I love Charles Baudelaire. Him and Shakespeare are the only people I think are better than me.

I enjoy gigging in industrial towns. It seems to be where I go down the best. Somewhere where they have a history of manufacturing, they're my favourite places to play.

I'm not fond of crowds. I'm no jittery neurotic, but I don't really want to be surrounded by a lot of people if I have a choice.

When the punk rock thing happened, I thought, 'Right, I have one chance here to be seen as part of some wider social phenomenon.'

There are only three things that stop me sleeping: hunger, the odd bad dream and cramp in the arches of my feet - it's crippling, as if somebody's trying to tie your foot in a reef knot.