Chekhov was as important to me as anybody as a writer.

I learned to wrestle, I learned defensive fighting at a young age, because when someone hit me, I would throw up and fall down.

Vanity: my favorite sin.

I was never very happy with performing; it didn't turn me on much.

The physical stamina [in Revolution]. I was just shocked by it. I didn't think I had it in me ever, and I wasn't terribly young when I did it. I was in my early forties. That was the first thing I was struck by, not by the acting, not by anything else, but by the physicality.

I don't talk politics and I don't talk philosophy or anything like that, but if you look at my work, you might get an expression of me as a person.

I used to think of myself as a comedian. I've always admired comedians. Their minds, the way in which they se the world is so striking, the way they juxtapose things, the way they can see humor in people. There's a liberation in that.