"My movies are unadorned, they're not particularly fancy, I think they're kind of workmanlike in some ways, focusing on the writing and the acting."

"The trap for an actor is that you become too successful at what you're trying to do, and you can find yourself stuck there."

"God help me if I ever do another movie with an explosion in it. If you see me in a movie where stuff is exploding you'll know I've lost all my money."

"All I do, really, is go to work and try to be professional, be on time and be prepared."

"There's something really great and romantic about being poor and sleeping on couches."

"I grew up in a house with a mother who was a teacher and a Freedom Rider - very left-wing Democrats living in a heterogeneous working-class neighborhood. I picked up a lot of those values there, and I brought them with me when I showed up in Hollywood."

"There's a lot of noise in the world, and the Internet magnifies that energy."

"The first day of 'The Town' was one of the most satisfying days of my career."

"I lived with this tremendous fear of failure because my father was a playwright and a director, and I think he did a couple of things as a child as an actor as well, and he... he failed, basically."

"Sometimes I get insecure about being a real director because I look at the great directors, and they have such command. But maybe that keeps me critical of myself. Maybe it keeps me moving forward."

"The first 'Star Wars' movie had come out in 1977 and had become this huge phenomenon with all the toys and everything - it just kind of swept America. But internationally, it was also a big deal."

"I've never held myself up particularly high when I had movies that worked, and I never held myself all that low when I had failures."

"What happens is this sort of bleed-over from the tabloids across your movie work. You go to a movie, you only go once. But the tabloids and Internet are everywhere. You can really subsume the public image of somebody."

"I'm a writer. An amateur photographer. An actor."

"You get old, you slow down."

"I like roundtables because you can talk more directly to people. And you also can get kind of a vibe on what a journalist's take is on something, and have a conversation with them more."

"I knew I had to get out of Boston and stop making movies there, at least for one movie, otherwise no one would ever consider me for a movie that took place south of Providence."

"The first thing that I really understood politically and was old enough to get was the failed assassination attempt on Reagan."

"I'm not the most loathsome man in the world. I've dropped to number nine."

"One guy told me I was a great actor, I just would never be on the cover of a magazine."

"A friend of my mom's was a casting director so, really as kind of a lark, I had a couple of acting jobs that had just enough exposure to give me the option to continue if I wanted to. I followed through with it."

"I grew up in a home environment where I wasn't getting esteem for anything I did."

"Not that it entirely matters: There is a perception that all actors make their movies. A lot of people assume you're responsible. George Clooney told me actors get all of the blame and all the credit."

"After 2000 or so, I started to realize I wanted to be doing something else. I didn't want to be in front of a camera. I was frustrated. I didn't think I would stop acting, but I didn't want to be seen."

"You're basically the sum of all the experiences you've ever had, and they're sort of shaken up in you and reproduced in the things you create, and that includes seeing movies."

"I'm sure I can make a movie that doesn't feel like a seventies movie! But the truth is, that's my favorite era in American filmmaking. To me, those were the great years."

"Every single director-actor I talked to, from Warren Beatty to Clint Eastwood to George Clooney, said the biggest mistake they made is not shooting enough footage of themselves."

"As an actor, you can steer a scene in another direction by playing it a little differently. And honestly? I like being an actor, and I want to keep having a career."

"The one benefit of having done all kinds of movies as an actor is, you learn the pros and cons of being tempted to do a really big movie because it costs a lot of money."

"I've finally learnt how to say, 'No comment'. To appear in the tabloids is a real learning curve and a steep one at that. You had better learn quick or you get burnt."

"I just feel like sometimes I'm a force to be dealt with. My talents are sometimes overused and also sometimes underused. It's not easy being me."

"You know George M. Steinbrenner III is the center of all evil in the universe."

"You have to look also to the media, where you have a vast majority of the loudest and most influential political voices in America media from people who came from the entertainment world."

"I kinda see my current position like this: Here's your five minutes in the toy store, so you gotta do all the good movies you can before 'Chuck Woolery' rings the bell."

"I hate the whole reluctant sex-symbol thing. It's such bull. You see these dudes greased up, in their underwear, talking about how they don't want to be a sex symbol."

"I like to think that if I were gay I would be out. Rupert Everett-style."

"My mother gets all mad at me if I stay in a hotel. I'm 31-years-old, and I don't want to sleep on a sleeping bag down in the basement. It's humiliating."

"Marriage hasn't been my thing. But gay people, knock yourselves out!"

"I feel like fame is wasted on me."

"If I ever woke up with a dead hooker in my hotel room, Matt would be the first person I'd call."

"Rumors about me? Calista Flockhart, Pam Anderson, and Matt Damon. That's who I'm dating."

"When I look up at the screen and see myself I always have to laugh. Not because I think I'm doing a horrible job, quite the contrary, I just feel it's so surreal to feel like one person can entertain so many at one time."

"Nobody I represent is pretending to be the pope or a role model for young people. People have to live their lives. They have the right to smoke if they want."

"Nobody I represent is pretending to be the pope or a role model for young people. People have to live their lives. They have the right to smoke if they want."

"Well I've never used that phrase before, but yes she is bootylicious."

"It's wrong and disgusting to follow children around and take their picture and sell it for money."

"People of similar political persuasions tend to flock together."

"People decided that I was the frat guy, even though I've never been inside a fraternity, or the guy who beat them up at school, even though that wasn't me at all."

"My father has positional vertigo, and if he flies he gets really dizzy, so he has to drive out to California, which he does a couple times a year. We talk, but we e-mail mostly."

"There's a lot of crazy, weird people out there. It's an ugly world."