For me, there's a fine line between telling a story that's fictional with lots of details and then removing yourself too much from it, so it's bloodless, a little too fictional.

I have a 6-year-old, and his thing is to turn on Radio Disney in the car, and I get such an allergic reaction to listening to that music and the context into which it falls. I'm really working on him about that.

One of the things I've really gotten past in the last couple of years is the idea of being made uncomfortable by the way things appear, rather than how things are. Clearly in this business you have to contend with a lot of that.

I didn't want to play these people any more songs and have them say that they weren't good enough. So my response was to just not be able to write anymore. I know that's not the healthiest of responses.

I wanted to try to write songs on the piano to get a different flavor.

I certainly understand that we're all trying to make a living, but I'm not thinking about that when I'm making it. And if that's your sole motivation, it's going to reflect that narcissistic greed, and you're going to hear it in the music.

It really doesn't matter to me what people say about me anymore.

Everyone's just extracting meaning and feeling and emotion from almost every aspect of music, and I think that for me, it's a huge antidote to that to have a concept album.

You know what, the drummer is my manager. He's busy. And I'm busy. I don't need the dough, though. But having said that, there's a limit to how much bad music I wanna play. I did it when I was young, and some of the music was OK, but it wasn't great.

For me, there's a fine line between telling a story that's fictional with lots of details and then removing yourself too much from it, so it's bloodless, a little too fictional.

Everybody kind of understands, Oh yeah you take drugs and it does something to your brain and then you can't stop. It's easier to describe that shame, that horrible feeling of not being able to control your own life.

It's more important for me to have a good record with good music and be part of a movie that's good and where the music is used in a really great way. That's the important thing. The other stuff you want to say about it, I don't care.

Listen, I'm out of this system, man, I'm out... I'm doing better than ever. I couldn't be more happy.

The knock-out punch is always the one you never see coming.

It's funny, because my last record was a lot about isolation and people living in separate worlds that other people can't even understand, which drug addiction is the perfect negative example of.

In the '70s, everybody thought drugs were just good times. People didn't really know about drug addiction, or that such a thing existed. When I grew up in the '70s I thought you had to take drugs. It was almost like I didn't think you had a choice.

There's a lot of music that sounds like it's literally computer-generated, totally divorced from a guy sitting down at an instrument.

I did, like, one or two plays in high school, but I don't think I realized I wanted to do comedy until I got to college, and I started doing improv and saw the Upright Citizens Brigade perform and did workshops with them.

If I think about the way I was drawn into the music, it was much more by recordings than by live performances.

My turn of mind is so given to taking things in the absurd point of view, that it breaks out in spite of me every now and then.

Hunger of choice is a painful luxury hunger of necessity is terrifying torture.

I am terrified of submarines.

Pointing is a metaphor we all know. We've done a lot of studies and tests on that, and it's much faster to do all kinds of functions, such as cutting and pasting, with a mouse, so it's not only easier to use but more efficient.

An icon painter starts not with Jesus Christ but by finding earth and rubbing. Now what is earth, what are you rubbing in directing?

The compulsively readable events of my life occurred mainly in infancy, and it's been pretty humdrum ever since.

I've never been someone who's been given work because of the way I look or because I have some box office appeal. I get work because people know I'm swinging as hard as I can, trying to connect, giving it my level best. I have a face for radio, but here I am doing what I do.

White Americans, stop apologizing; we live in the greatest country in the history of mankind, and it's there because of our ancestors - those who came to this country and did their very best. And every generation has gotten better at what we're good at.

As the founder of your company, you must be in love with your brand and inspired by your brand's mission if you have any hope of getting press for your product.

I think my parents were happy that I'd gone to university and gotten a degree in history so they thought, 'Well if acting doesn't work for him, he can always become a history teacher or something.' Fortunately, the acting worked out.

My mind tends to operate a bit like a radar. I don't find it hard to switch off.

One can decide that the principal role of knowledge is as an indispensable element in the functioning of society, and act in accordance with that decision, only if one has already decided that society is a giant machine.

It always seems to me that my life would look completely different if I didn't have to take care of the rent.

My father was a research doctor at the National Institutes of Health in the early 1980s, and you couldn't work in the field and not know about D. Carleton Gajdusek, who my father often mentioned.

People around me like me the best when I'm depressed because I'm a bit more passive.

I think Kristin Bauer is a goddess.

One of the things I like about doing historical films is drawing the line between now and then.

Let's say that, in reality, I'm basically very shy when it comes to men.

There is always going to be a little bit of me in each character.

I write music as a staff writer for Universal Music Group, and I have since 2007. I've never talked about it publicly because I wanted to earn the right to be in the same room as the great writers I write with and not shoot my mouth off because I'm an actor. It's really important to me, and I really care about it.

Where you live in the world should not determine whether you live in the world.

My old man never used to cook, so we lived on takeaway. The others were always jealous.