First of all, you never make all things for all people and can`t always pander to the broadest denominator. I keep an eye toward doing the themes that interest me. Do they move me? Interest me? Make me think? When I run across something that is provocative in an unsettling way, it appeals to me.

Just because you`ve made a couple movies, you`ve done some good movies, you`ve been nominated for some Academy Awards, whatever, nobody`s entitled. It`s a business. If they don`t see it, I can think they`re wrong, but I`m not entitled to a $15 million budget to make a film.

If I ever have to stop taking the subway, I`m gonna have a heart attack.

I get heartbroken flying into L.A. It`s just this feeling of unspecific loss. Can you imagine what the San Fernando Valley was when it was all wheat fields? Can you imagine what John Steinbeck saw?

Acting? It`s a longstanding compulsion I`ve had since I was about five or six years old. I can literally identify the moment it struck me. I went to see a play [If I Were a Princess] in which a babysitter of mine [Betsy True, who later acted on Broadway] was performing. I was completely shell-shocked by the magic of this little community-theater play; it just riveted me.

I`m an actor and, each time out, I`m trying to convince the audience that I`m this character. Every little thing that people know about you as a person impedes your ability to achieve that kind of terrific suspension of disbelief that happens when an audience goes with an actor and character [he`s] playing.

I always felt that acting was an escape, like having the secret key to every door and permission to go into any realm and soak it up. I enjoy that free pass.

In fact, the United States today keeps on making the same sort of mistakes. We force those methods we think are useful on a few countries, hoping to make a few changes.

I`m not interested in making movies for everybody. I like making movies for myself and my friends and people with my sensibility.

He has such a rich mellifluous voice. Anytime I would hear him speak, it would remind me of how flat my voice is. (about Ralph Fiennes)

"Nobody makes me uncomfortable here. It`s a place where you can be eternally anonymous." - the reason he loves living in New York City

People wrestle sometimes making movies, and I think that conflict is a very essential thing. I think a lot of very happy productions have produced a lot of very banal movies.

It`s a nice position to be in; I`m lucky. At the same time, all the excitement of that has been put into stark perspective ... In some ways, the highs of it have been blunted, which in a way, is a gift.

The more you can create that magic bubble, that suspension of disbelief, for a while, the better.

I`ve never felt any particular encroachment of the `celebrity` stuff into my life.

Fame is very corrosive and you have to guard very strictly against it.

If I ever have to stop taking the subway, I`m gonna have a heart attack

Life, like poker has an element of risk. It shouldn`t be avoided. It should be faced.

I don`t smoke and I don`t want to smoke. I am not a fan of gratuitous smoking in films.