In L.A., if you're an actor, your personal and professional lives are too intertwined.

For a child actor, it's a matter of listening, reacting, and being able to put yourself in a new place without being scared.

A lot of the powerful religious leaders, from Jesus to Buddha to Tibetan monks, they're really talking about the same things: love and acceptable, and the value of friendship, and respecting yourself so you can respect others.

Some locations are so terrible, you can't even breathe, and you still have to act.

There is a point in every young person's life when you realize that the youth that you've progressed through and graduate to some sort of adulthood is equally as messed up as where you're going.

We are all searching for some form of family or foundation - for a place we can feel safe and secure.

A Christian high school is just like any other high school in the sense of the politics and all of these levels of who's cool and what to wear.

It's very easy to make certain decisions that affect your life that you have no perspective on.

No matter who the characters are, you can strip them down and find small universal truths.

But I've really learned you don't have to fit in. No matter where you go, you're always going to be you and if they don't like you for who you are, then what's the point of being someone else?

If we could all just laugh at ourselves, in hard times or good times, it would be an incredible world.

I think sleep's really important. I value it as much as waking up and having a full day.

When I'm not working, I definitely I like waking up at noon.

And I love writing; I've been writing ever since I was seven.

I used to want to be a children's writer, because I would have all these great ideas when I was little, and I'd write them and draw them, and turn them into class.

I love talking about movies that mean something to me.

Adolescence isn't just about prom or wearing sparkly dresses.

I think it's an individual thing. Your mountains are my molehills.

In L.A., if you're an actor, your personal and professional lives are too intertwined.

I tell my agent that I want to read everything.

Advice is such a tricky thing when you're young.

Belief is such a powerful thing - but because it is, it can also be very destructive and it's very easily manipulated.

If we could all just laugh at ourselves in hard times or good times it would be an incredible world.

ADOLESCENCE ISN'T JUST ABOUT PROM OR WEARING SPARKLY DRESSES.

My favorite actor is Wallace Beery.

I've been a very lucky actor.

I don't think I could be happy as an actor if there was a tyrant on the set.

When I was starting to get noticed as an actor in the 1970s for something other than the third cowboy on the right who ended up dying in every movie or episode, Burt Reynolds was the biggest star in the world.

Most parts that can be played by one actor can equally well be played by another, but not this.

I think, frankly, that I'm a better director than I was an actor.

I knew an actor's career goes up and down and back up again. Your standing in this business can't be your whole identity; otherwise, you're doomed.

I don't think any actor feels comfortable watching themselves in movies. You must be very narcissistic. The problem with your own opinion of yourself is that contrary to the normal spectators, when you watch a film you are in, you only watch yourself.

I don't think there has been any increase in sophistication in the audience. When people are aware of a concept that's easy to understand, and there's an actor who will attract them to the theater and it's a movie that's funny three-quarters of the time, it will be successful.

I never dreamed about being an actor, because that was out of reach. Coming from a small town that was big in farming, and also big in clothing factories, you don't dream about being a professional football player or an actor.

My goal was always to be recognized as a good actor but no one was interested in that, simply because society just wants to warm towards your appearance. This is the great blemish of society.

If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable.

To be honest with you, when I got into this I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

It was very natural for me to want to disappear into dark theater, I am really very shy. That is something that people never seem to fully grasp because, when you are an actor, you are meant to be an exhibitionist.

I think that I've still not been successful at playing the role of the retired actor, and I'd like to work on that.

And once you cease to be a real person, you stop being a good actor.

When I decided I wanted to be an actor, I said I wanted to work with quality actors and directors.

There are roles I want that my agency might not want me to do because of the subject matter or whatever. Or there are roles that people won't bring to me because they don't think I'll do it. And that is a big strain because an actor wants to act.

Reality is, I'm an actor and an entertainer, and I really wouldn't know what to do with another profession.

I still feel like I'm trying to make it. It's hard to shed the struggling actor thing.

Only a great actor finds the difficulties of the actor's art infinite.

Follow the wisdom of the great actor, James Cagney, you hit your mark, you look the other guy in the eye, and you tell the truth.

I was always a character actor. I just looked like Little Red Riding Hood.

In other words, I wouldn't like to be an actor if I could only be real. I like to get wild, behaviorally wild, and it's crazy to think of any form where it's just one way.

An actor entering through the door, you've got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you've got a situation.