The joy of acting for me is to be able to experience emotions in a safe environment. You can't scream and cry in the street because everybody will look. If you do it on a movie set, you get applauded.

Every character I play has to be the hero of his own story, the way we're all heroes of our own lives.

If you're acting, then there's a prescribed way to behave; whereas in life there's no prescribed way. So acting feels like a comfortable way to get through the day.

When playing a role, I would feel more comfortable, as you're given a prescribed way of behaving. So, both Facebook and theatre provide contrived settings that provide the illusion of social interaction.

And I'm sure after Facebook it will be the little cameras that we have implanted into the palms of our hands and we'll be debating whether we should get them, and then we'll all get them.

I grew up in Queens and New Jersey. I started doing children's theater when I was seven to get out of school because I didn't fit in.

The joy of acting for me is to be able to experience emotions in a safe environment. You can't scream and cry in the street because everybody will look. If you do it on a movie set, you get applauded.

I am actually going to two therapists right now. I don't know, I actually feel like therapy has just made me more uncomfortable.

Look, I don't have a Facebook page because I have little interest in hearing myself talk about myself any further than I already do in interviews or putting any more about myself online than there already is. But if I wasn't in this position, I'm sure I would use it every day.

Society will decide after the technology is created what we will and won't accept.

I write plays, and I have a musical that's starting to get produced now. That's what I would love to do, but it's so hard. The only reason people are reading my plays and musicals is because I'm in movies.

Acting forces me to socialise, which is good for me, I think.

Acting is a weird, kind of alienating job because you're in an isolated place. Even if you're working with a lot of other people, you're kind of alienated. Actors say that a lot, and I kind of find that to be true.

Acting is kind of difficult to intellectualize - it's a far more visceral experience. It's really hard to be able to think about and then employ these kind of esoteric notions of this person's backstory and try to weave it in somehow. It's just kind of impossible.

All of my pleasures are guilty, but that's just the way I'm wired.

As an actor, if I show up late somewhere or I say something that's eccentric, it's totally acceptable - not only that, it's lauded in some perverse way.

As an actor, you are in a unique position because you're not only memorizing dialogue but really embodying it. You naturally feel the rhythm of good writing.

As an actor, you have to be open to doing things where you look stupid, to be experimental.

As an actor, you try to bring as much of yourself to a part to try and create a feeling of authenticity and emotional truth and resonance.

Depression, if it's an unconsciously elected experience, is a luxury.

Everyone's a geek in some way or other. Everyone's an outsider.

I always thought Woody Harrelson is quite a persuasive guy. He's the kind of guy who can call you up in the middle of the night and tell you, 'Let's all go get a donut!' And you're thinking, 'It's the middle of the night,' but somehow you still get up and go get a donut.

I can't watch myself in interviews. I feel like I look like a wreck. My mom is always calling me and going, 'Stop fidgeting,' and it's like, 'You have no idea what it's like, Mom.'

I cried every day of first grade. In class. Which meant I ended up getting comfortable emoting in a place where it wasn't the norm.

I did children's theater when I was younger, and then when I was about 14 I started doing theater in New York City.

I don't attribute an actor's great success to their own individual performance when it's something as collaborative as a movie.

I don't follow sports that much now, but I was a Phoenix Suns fanatic in the early '90s.

I don't go to movies, I don't own a television, I don't buy magazines and I try not to receive mail, so I'm not really aware of popular culture.

I don't have a Facebook page because I have little interest in hearing myself talk about myself any further than I already do in interviews or putting any more about myself online than there already is.

I don't understand capri pants. They seem like neither here nor there.

I feel very guilty doing magic because you're deceiving somebody.

I find people who want to help other people to be the most interesting. I come from a family of teachers, and my friends are teachers, often times in very difficult school situations.

I get very homesick, but otherwise it's a great privilege to get to travel for work.

I grew up in a secular suburban Jewish household where we only observed the religion on very specific times like a funeral or a Bar Mitzvah.

I grew up in an apolitical household. I never left the country. When I became an adult, I started traveling and became interested in politics, and I probably talked about things in a silly, ignorant way.

I guess the more serious you play something, if the context is funny, then it will be funny and it doesn't really require you to be necessarily, explicitly humorous, or silly.

I had great difficulty in school interacting with others, and I took refuge in the contrived setting of play acting, which is what I still do.

I hate watching me. I hate watching me. It just makes me feel awful. I think, 'I look stupid from that angle. I wish I didn't let them put that shirt on me.'

I have a job that requires me to be in the public eye in the way that makes me extra careful about sharing information.

I have an iPad and I watch three things: 'The Daily Show,' '60 Minutes,' and 'Meet the Press.'

I have one female fan. But she lives with me. I'm not aware of any others.

I know some amazing actors who are not mortified every moment of the day, so my feeling is that maybe you don't have to be a wreck to be good.

I like driving; I don't drive since I live in New York. I don't have an opportunity to drive, like, ever.

I live in New York City, so there's so much stimulation when you walk outside, it does not require a television in the home.

I meet people who are in movies, and the stuff that they write is terrible, but nobody tells them that because they're famous. So I worry that my stuff might be like that, too.

I often think if you have time to sit around the house feeling bad for yourself, you have time to tutor a child. I'm guilty of that exact thing. I will spend more time sitting around feeling bad for myself than actually helping somebody.

I prefer playing characters that are going through turmoil. Most movie characters are just in service to the story.

I purposefully isolate myself from anything that has to do with any press. I don't read any press about myself.

I tend to be pessimistic about everything: If things seem to be going good, I'm worried that it's going to end; if things are bad, then I'm worried that it's going to be permanent. It's not a very comfortable attitude to have all the time.