The more you understand me, the less characters I can play.

In this business, you're either Brad Pitt right away, or you're already going down the ladder.

As an actor, you want to keep your demons to some extent, but you also have to exorcise them so you can use them instead of them using you.

I think people could justify labeling me if they saw a pattern in what I do, but right now that's impossible.

I had gone to school to study marine biology.

I scored a 910 on my SAT. I didn't care about education. I don't know what I cared about.

I guess I'm a little charmed. I never thought this would happen so quick.

Everybody else has been seen, been proven.

I think I'm extremely vulnerable and that in some ways I seek out rejection. Never feeling like you're getting that pat on the back from dad is probably at the heart of that.

As a kid I used to pretend I was John Denver, of all people, and play the guitar and sing Take Me Home, Country Roads.

I would take William H. Macy as a teacher any day of the week. He's incredible. He's got a lot of hard-earned experience.

The more you understand me, the less characters I can play.

Whatever labels are being pinned on me have nothing to do with me.

I think when someone becomes an actor, people say, Aw, you could see it in him when he was little. But I think you can see that quality in every little kid.

There's a lot of reasons you can think of to say why you act, but I can only say that it just felt good. At the same time, it felt really painful. It's still troubling and stressful to me.

I grew up in a small farming town called Concord, outside Charlotte in North Carolina.

Any time I got in emotional turmoil, I felt sick all the time, like at any minute I would die.

I think you have to refill the well at some point.

I'm an actor, coming from New York theater.

The whole Indian thing, I always say it's really the American holocaust. It's something we need to look at.

I'm not the most talkative guy in the world.

People said, That's great for your career, but what have you done? I kept feeling I had to defend myself.

Everyone's really lazy in L.A.

Ambiguity in directors is a hard thing to deal with.

I didn't even go to my prom. I didn't have one date in high school.

There's been a boiling down of real emotion into a set pattern instead of individualism.

I feel like I want to crawl out of my skin, especially when people start questioning me.

What's the classical moment that every actor or actress deals with? A tragic thing. They get that blank, faraway look in their eyes. But in life, it's not that way.

My mom's been married three times; my dad has been married a lot. I didn't really see my dad that much.

I get to play a killer next.

My problem with interviews, one day I'll think one thing, and the next day I'll think the exact opposite.

Ultimately, it's a pretty confusing moment.

The Native American side was tragic. It's just unbelievable what has happened to them.

Because of the need to remove all modernism, we stayed in the middle of nowhere all day long, living out of tents. It was cold. It definitely set the scene.

I don't use the techniques I learned at NYU much anymore.

I was nicknamed Skeeter in Little League because I was small and fast, like a mosquito flying across the outfield.

We should have a State in which we could live and breathe as free men and which we could develop according to our own lights and culture and where principles of Islamic social justice could find free play.

So, first you have to be able to play with a metronome. Then you take your freedom. If you play in an orchestra, you got to watch the conductor, he is like a metronome, but it is more difficult because he can change rhythms.

Never play anything that don't sound right. You might not make any money, but at least you won't get hostile with yourself.

A play is much easier to maintain your personal life with because if you're rehearsing, you're working like from 11 to 6 or 11 to 5 and you get to have your whole morning and your whole evening. When you're doing the play, you have all day.

I'd like to one day play Amanda, the mother, in The Glass Menagerie.

I couldn't be happier about being a part of 'Hunger Games' and to play Katniss. I have a huge responsibility to the fans of this incredible book and I don't take it lightly. I will give everything I have to these movies and to this role to make it worthy of Suzanne Collins' masterpiece.

For years the Trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We practically starved to death.

If you give it good concentration, good energy, good heart and good performance, the song will play you.

Genius is not a possession of the limited few, but exists in some degree in everyone. Where there is natural growth, a full and free play of faculties, genius will manifest itself.

I mean when the play was on in New York I was starting to get film offers coming through, and since the film's come out I get offered more than I used to, but it happens incrementally.

If Davis Cup was a little bit less or once every two years, I would be more inclined to play. But the way it is now, it is too much tennis for me.

I remember him watching me through the crack of a door singing with a hairbrush. I was in front of his mirror. I think he wanted me to sing. He would get me on the table and make me sing sometimes or play the piano. He was very encouraging on that front.

If you watch a game, it's fun. If you play it, it's recreation. If you work at it, it's golf.