"I grew up in Oklahoma and Missouri, and I just loved film. My folks would take us to the drive-in on summer nights, and we'd sit on the hood of the car. I just had this profound love for storytelling."

"I'd like to design something like a city or a museum. I want to do something hands on rather than just play golf which is the sport of the religious right."

"I have very few friends. I have a handful of close friends, and I have my family, and I haven't known life to be any happier."

"My life has been about big changes."

"In Missouri, where I come from, we don't talk about what we do - we just do it. If we talk about it, it's seen as bragging."

"Given a chance, I would like to work with Aishwarya Rai Bachchan because she's a versatile actor."

"What's valuable to me has become clearer as I've got older. To me, it's about the value of your time and your day and the value of the people you spend it with."

"A family is a risky venture, because the greater the love, the greater the loss... That's the trade-off. But I'll take it all."

"You can't be different for different's sake, and this doesn't always work, but you have to separate yourself from the normal read. Of course, it has to be truthful. If it's not truthful, don't waste your time."

"You must lose everything in order to gain anything."

"I oscillate between agnosticism and atheism."

"We're so complex; we're mysteries to ourselves; we're difficult to each other. And then storytelling reminds us we're all the same."

"I always liked those moments of epiphany, when you have the next destination."

"Man, when I'm riding with the helmet on, I'm invisible. And people just deal with me as the guy on the bike... it gives you a chance to read 'em."

"How many stories have you read that aren't true, stories about me and Angie being married or fighting or splitting up? And when we don't split up, there's a whole new round that we've made up and we're back together again!"

"When I first started, they were trying to get me into sitcoms - I think because I had that kind of Wonder Bread look and my hair always went into place. I kept saying, 'I'm not good at sitcoms. I don't know how to do that.'"

"I have this fantasy of my older days, painting or sculpting or making things. I have this fantasy of a bike trip to Chile. I have this fantasy of flying into Morocco. But right now, it's about getting the work done and getting home to family. I have an adventure every morning, getting up."

"If I'm gonna spend however long it takes to make a movie, give up 14 hours a day for however many weeks or months, then it's very important for me to know that I'm working with people who I respect and enjoy and that we're going for something together."

"I grew up on particular movies that said something to me as a kid from Missouri, movies that showed me places I'd yet traveled, or different cultures, or explained something, or said something in a better way than I could ever say. I wanted to find the movies like that. It was less about a career than finding the films I wanted to see."

"I've always been at war with myself, for right or wrong. I don't know how to explain it more. It's universal. Some people are better at dealing with it, and they sleep with no pain - not pain, arguments. I've grown quite comfortable with being at war."

"It took me a good decade of hiding in my house and not going outside to even, like, get my arms around this idea of celebrity, where suddenly people are looking for you to pick your nose or get a shot of you kissing some woman. It's a very discombobulating thing."

"When you see a person, do you just concentrate on their looks? It's just a first impression. Then there's someone who doesn't catch your eye immediately, but you talk to them and they become the most beautiful thing in the world. The greatest actors aren't what you would call beautiful sex symbols."

"The best moments can't be preconceived. I've spent a lot of time in editing rooms, and a scene can be technically perfect, with perfect delivery and facial expression and timing, and you remember all your lines, and it is dead."

"I had a friend who worked at a hospice, and he said people in their final moments don't discuss their successes, awards or what books they wrote or what they accomplished. They only talk about their loves and their regrets, and I think that's very telling."

"I had a friend who worked at a hospice, and he said people in their final moments don't discuss their successes, awards or what books they wrote or what they accomplished. They only talk about their loves and their regrets, and I think that's very telling."

"I look and there's our boy from Vietnam and our daughter from Ethiopia, and our girl was born in Namibia, and our son is from Cambodia, and they're brothers and sisters, man. They're brothers and sisters and it's a sight for elation."

"I was very curious about the world even at a young age, and I don't know at what point I became aware that other cultures believed in different religions, and my question was, 'Well, why don't they get to go to Heaven then?'"

"America is a country founded on guns. It's in our DNA. It's very strange but I feel better having a gun. I really do. I don't feel safe, I don't feel the house is completely safe, if I don't have one hidden somewhere. That's my thinking, right or wrong."

"That's the most important thing to me - that if I'm gonna spend however long it takes to make a movie, give up 14 hours a day for however many weeks or months, then it's very important for me to know that I'm working with people who I respect and enjoy and that we're going for something together."

"The latitude and longitudinal lines of where you are born determine your opportunity in life, and it's not equal. We may have been created equal, but we're not born equal. It's a lot to do with luck and you have to pass that on."

"I know when I go outside, there'll be a van or two and they'll probably follow us four out of seven days a week, trying to get something. But I'm just going across town and I know they're just wasting their day, so it doesn't bother me anymore."

"It's hard to be surprised by a film. It's hard to be surprised by another actor or by a director when you've seen enough and been around. So when I am, or when I forget that I'm watching someone's movie, or when I don't know how someone made a certain turn that I didn't expect . . . You know, I'm in."

"When I first got out to Hollywood, they were pushing me for sitcoms, and I didn't really have an interest in them. I wanted to do films and slowly worked that way. And then it became, I guess, this curse of the leading man."

"I grew up on certain movies, particular movies that said something to me as a kid from Missouri, movies that showed me places I'd yet traveled, or different cultures, or explained something, or said something in a better way than I could ever say. I wanted to find the movies like that."

"When you first get opportunities, suddenly you get surrounded by a lot of people who want to make money off you but also are there to help. But they start telling you so much what you need to be and what you need to do to maintain some idea of career maintenance."

"When I first moved to L.A., I discovered Roy London. I didn't know anything about the arts, the profession; I had no technique, I knew nothing, I'm fresh from Missouri. I sat in on a few classes, and they just felt a little guru-ish and just didn't feel right to me. Until I met Roy."

"Once again...welcome to my house. Come freely. Go safely; and leave something of the happiness you bring."

"There is a reason why all things are as they are."

"I am longing to be with you, and by the sea, where we can talk together freely and build our castles in the air."

"Remember my friend, that knowledge is stronger than memory, and we should not trust the weaker"

"I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul. God keep me, if only for the sake of those dear to me!"

"I want you to believe...to believe in things that you cannot."

"Despair has its own calms."

"I will not let you go into the unknown alone."

"Loneliness will sit over our roofs with brooding wings."

"How good and thoughtful he is; the world seems full of good men--even if there are monsters in it."

"Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors; and hereafter she may suffer--both in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams."

"Denn die Todten reiten Schnell. (For the dead travel fast.)"

"I sometimes think we must be all mad and that we shall wake to sanity in strait-waistcoats."

"No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be."