"To some extent I happily don't know what I'm doing. I feel that it's an artist's responsibility to trust that."

"As music becomes less of a thing--a cylinder, a cassette, a disc--and more ephemeral, perhaps we will begin to assign an increasing value to live performances again."

"Stop making sense"

"Music isn't fragile."

"When everything is visible and appears to be dumb, that's when the details take on larger meanings."

"Patience is a virtue but I don't have the time."

"Years ago I was an angry young man I'd pretend that I was a billboard standing tall by the side of the road I fell in love with the beautiful highway"

"Some of you people just about missed it"

"Simplicity is a kind of transparency in which subtle nuances can have outsize effects. When everything is visible and appears to be dumb, that’s when the details take on larger meanings."

"Music resonates in so many parts of the brain that we can’t conceive of it being an isolated thing. It’s whom you were with, how old you were, and what was happening that day."

"It was a uniform that signified that one was a kind of downtown aesthete; not necessarily nihilistic, but a monk in the bohemian order."

"Every outfit carries cultural baggage of some kind. It took me a while to get a handle on this aspect of performance."

"It was the best show I’d ever seen; it was so tight and choreographed that it seemed to be from another planet, a planet where everyone was incredible."

"Temple and cathedral are attractive because they spatially and acoustically recreate the cave, where early humans first expressed their spiritual yearnings."

"Western music in the Middle Ages was performed in these stone-walled gothic cathedrals, and in architecturally similar monasteries and cloisters."

"Facts just twist the truth around."

"People probably heard a greater quantity of music, and a greater variety, on these devices than they would ever hear in person in their lifetimes."

"Music eats its young and gives birth to a new hybrid creature."

"I wanted to find a reason not to be cynical—to have some faith even when nothing around me seemed to justify it."

"Feelings come and go, unless you don't feel them. Then they stay, and hurt, and grow pear-shaped and weird."

"You can't control your mind. Why would you want to?"

"You can't just wear the food chain around your neck like a bauble or necklace. You're part of it and if you keep treating it with disdain, that chain will strangle you."

"Every day I try to do breathing exercises, meditation, and yoga. These things sound awfully cliche, but they help me slow down and try to point to a truth."

"Part of being an actor is letting things come about organically as opposed to forcing them."

"I’ve never seen a wild almond or a soy galloping about in its natural habitat, but cow milk is the best."

"Dogs are the broccaflower of the animal kingdom."

"You think plants don’t have feelings? Maybe not the type of feelings you and I have, but they do have planty feelings, really slow feelings that unfold or blossom over years rather than seconds."

"It's hard to leave anywhere. Even if the place sucked. It's hard to leave anywhere at all."

"I'm constantly amazed by the ability a child has to show sympathy, to read emotions, to get to the heart of any situation. It's unfiltered and completely inspiring."

"My favorite parts of work as an actor and a director are those unplanned mistakes that do happen, because it's like catching lightning in a bottle. It's the best part of what we do."

"The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind. —CHARLES DARWIN"

"Sometimes the better the writing, the harder it is to play because you really want to service it. It's hard to be that quick and articulate in life. You've got to try to make it seem discovered, you know, not rehearsed."

"It's always a mystery when you're going into a role - 'Here's your wife of 40 years and... action!' How do you create ease or chemistry or whatever is supposed to exist?"

"I feel like I came to acting late in a way. I was about 26 or 27, and it was imperative that I make a living right away, and it's hard to make a living on stage, so I started in television and film."

"Generally, I don't like to walk out of a movie. It's like a relationship - you want to see it to the end; otherwise, you won't know if you left early or not."

"'Alien' is a great movie. So is 'Close Encounters.' But I'm not the guy who goes out to the science-fiction festival. '2001's good."

"I'm half Jewish, half Scottish. It's hard for me to buy anything."

"I never, ever, ever cook. And I would never eat anything I might cook."

"I think Polanski's an amazing director."

"I'd love to direct more."

"You can go through life and actually speak your mind and do it in an articulate fashion and with a really intelligent point of view."

"In terms of likeability, that's something that I don't think about as an actor when I approach a role."

"I wouldn't succeed at musical theater."

"I don't think of myself as a TV actor. I think of myself as a film, television and Off-Off-Off-Off Broadway actor."

"I don't need my phone to play me music. I need it to be a phone and an e-mail thing."

"It's always like you write a poem when you can't really say what you're trying to say."

"Sometimes the better the writing, the harder it is to play because you really want to service it."

"I never thought about the actors on television or film, like what kind of life they had."

"I understand the self-loathing and the resentment, and the discipline that it takes to sit down in front of a typewriter or computer every single day, whether it's going well or not going well."

"I envisioned that as my life: staying in academia to make a living and then taking summers off to write my novels."