"LA has its own vibe. It has a charm that a lot of people overlook sometimes."

"You can't knock a place where you realized your dreams."

"I love acting with all my heart and I love music with all my heart."

"My songs aren't built around choruses or hooks or anything like that. That's kind of how I write screenplays too."

"Sometimes I have songs born out of stories."

"Songwriting and screenwriting aren't that different to me."

"Usually with film writing I start with characters, and set about writing their story."

"People's attention spans are a little shorter these days. Same thing with food and movies."

"[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 write songs on guitar and that's about how good of a guitar player I am. I can write songs on it."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Life is magical and I guess my thing is I wish that people wanted that magic."

"I can't sit through plays and musical theatre. I just want to run up onstage and mess up their hair and turn over the furniture."

"These days and times you can't do eclectic records. In the '60s you could, but not anymore."

"I figured I would have to tell someone to kiss my ass before it was all over, and I have -- twice."

"Anytime you get a chance to play some extreme character, in any direction, it's always a great blessing."

"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."

"You want to know the hardest thing about being smart? What? I pretty much always know what's going to happen next; there's no suspense."

"I'm more influenced by novelists than I am by filmmakers."

"Usually when you're playing a character, you think a lot about their backstory."

"Playing normal-looking characters really intimidatesme. I got into acting to play anyone but me."

"I'm as highly insecure as a human can be."

"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 never expected to be a movie star. It's not that I didn't want to be, I didn't think about it. I wanted to be an actor."

"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."

"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."

"I attribute all my success to ignorance. If you don't ever think about not getting where you want to be, I think it helps you out."

"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."

"Somewhere along the line we stopped believing we could do anything. And if we don't have our dreams, we have nothing."

"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?"

"I believe in running through the rain and crashing into the person you love and having your lips bleed on each other."

"I quit flying years ago. I don't want to die with tourists."

"I was the fattest baby in Clark County, Arkansas. They put me in the newspaper. It was like a prize turnip."

"I've danced one time in my life. It was the most mortifying experience I ever had."

"Just the other day, my assistant was on the line with Calvin Klein. Golly, I usually shop at Sears."

"When people wear shoes that don't fit them, it says something about their soul. Generally, I think it means they are good people."

"If you love somebody let them know every day."

"Every couple I know has side-by-side grave plots, but when we do it we're the biggest weirdos on the block."

"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."

"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."

"Marketing is the devil."

"Man, I was drowning in sadness. And Angelina, she lifted me right up out of there."

"Getting the nomination is like gravy. Winning would be like whatever is better than gravy."

"I don't have a fear of flying; I have a fear of crashing."

"Movies these days have made killers into funny people. What's that all about? I've got kids and family and friends, and I don't like bad things. I don't think they're funny, and it's irresponsible to make movies that don't show you how that's not good."

"My process started when I was born. The process is life experience. I believe that what makes you an artist, or at least an artist who can communicate the ideas that they want to get across, are people that have life experience."

"I am fairly embraced by the Hollywood community, and I love making movies and I love acting, but I'm not real crazy about the Hollywood system. So the fact that they embrace me is a shock to me because I tell them to kiss my ass all the time. I don't understand why they haven't thrown me out on my ear. The other thing is I don't participate much. I have very few friends within the movie community. I hang out with some guys I've known forever. They're all broke and eat me out of house and home. But I stay home mostly and I don't go to the parties. Maybe that preserves me."