When you're young you believe it when people tell you how good you are. And that's the danger, you inhale. Everyone will tell you you're a genius, which you are not, and if you understand that, you win.

I'd think,'In a relationship, we should never have his kind of fight.' Then, instead of figuring out how to make it work, I looked for a way to get out of it. The truth is, you shouldn't be married if your that kind of person.

I've been lucky enough to do a few films that will last longer than an opening weekend and those films are the ones I'm proud of.

As you get older and ease your way into being a character actor you have to be comfortable with where you are in life and career, and I'm very comfortable with what I'm doing - working on projects I'm proud of.

The idea that every time you do a film you're supposed to be tortured confuses me. I mean, guys who say, 'Oh, it's really tough, my character is really suffering' -come on. For us, even in the rotten ones we've had a good time. I don't think you have to suffer.

I grew up in the world of bad television, on my dad's sets and then as a young schmuck on dating shows and so on.

I'm not smart enough and I don't know enough about what's going on.

The only failure is not to try.

Who would name their kid Jack with the last words 'off' at the end of the last name? No wonder that guy is screwed up.

I love children and I get along with them great. It's just that I believe if you're going to be a parent, there has to be something inside you that says, 'I want a family.' I don't feel that sense of urgency.

I don't believe in happy endings, but I do believe in happy travels, because ultimately, you die at a very young age, or you live long enough to watch your friends die. It's a mean thing, life.

When you're young you believe it when people tell you how good you are. And that's the danger, you inhale. Everyone will tell you you're a genius, which you are not, and if you understand that, you win.

The government itself is running exactly like the Sopranos and they sit back and they make deals. And they say okay, 'I'm going do this: France, you're getting the pipelines.'

People know everything about everybody now.

I'm the flavor of the month.

I'm a Method actor. I spent years training for the drinking and carousing I had to do in this film.

I don't care. Charlton Heston is the head of the National Rifle Association. He deserves whatever anyone says about him.

There is a strange pecking order among actors. Theater actors look down on film actors, who look down on TV actors. Thank God for reality shows, or we wouldn't have anybody to look down on.

You have only a short period of time in your life to make your mark, and I'm there now.

It's incredibly unfair. You don't see a lot of 60-year-old women with 20-year-old men onscreen.

I was watching 'Up In The Air' and I thought, 'Jesus, who's the old gray-haired guy?' And it was me. I never wear makeup for movies and now it's starting to show.

I don't like to share my personal life... it wouldn't be personal if I shared it.

The hardest thing is trying not to correct everything on the Internet. It'd be night and day - wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. So you just have to say, 'All right, I'll take it, bring it on.'

I'm certainly the last person to give advice on, well, anything.

They say I was a bad Batman, that it was my fault, that I buried the franchise. But the truth is, it was a big project. I was pretty intimidated in that world. I did the best I could in the situation I was given.

I'm really white trash.

After doing One Fine Day and playing a pediatrician on ER, I'll never have kids. I'm going to have a vasectomy.

I was in a bar and I said to a friend, 'You know, we've become those 40-year-old guys we used to look at and say, 'Isn't it sad?'

We're picking on people we can beat.

The last real movie stars were probably Redford and Newman. And things were different then. There wasn't this amazing amount of magazines and information about them.

The problem is, we elected a manager and we need a leader. Let's face it: Bush is just dim.

But I'm kind of comfortable with getting older because it's better than the other option, which is being dead. So I'll take getting older.

Run for office? No. I've slept with too many women, I've done too many drugs, and I've been to too many parties.

I bought a piano once because I had the dream of playing As Time Goes By as some girl's leaning on it drinking a martini. Great image. But none of it worked out. I can't even play Chopsticks. But I've got a nice piano at my house!

You make a lot of films, do you? You make a lot of films yourself? Yeah, I'd like to see you make a film first before you get to talk about it. What a jerk.

America can't beat anyone anymore.

There's no connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq.

I just found out about 10 days ago that I must live 300 or 400 yards from Britney Spears... so now I have to move.

'Ides of March' I did for scale - scale as a director, scale as an actor, scale as a writer.

After a while, you just want transportation, and things like cool cars or motorcycles are all about getting attention. I get all the attention I could ever need, so I kind of like being in a minivan and people not paying so much attention to me.

An acting career usually has about a shelf life of ten years before people get sick of seeing you. It's a good thing to have a job to fall back on and I really do enjoy directing.

Anyone would be lying if they said they didn't get lonely at times.

Anytime there's an actual grassroots movement that isn't funded by people trying to create a grassroots movement, I find that interesting.

Directing is much more satisfying to me than acting.

Directing is really exciting. In the end, it's more fun to be the painter than the paint.

Directors are the captains of the ship, and it's your job as the lead actor to make sure that the rest of the cast understand that by doing whatever he says.

Failures are infinitely more instructive than successes.

Fame can be very dangerous, because you can start to enjoy that part of it. And that's not the good part of what I do for a living. The good part is the making of films. The unpleasant part is the fame part, if you're not careful.

For me, the definition of a patriot is someone who is willing to constantly question the government; that's what separates us from other countries.