You dont know someone until you know what they want.

What occurred to me on [‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’], and also with the passing of her mother, is that there's going to come a time when I'm not going to get to be with this person anymore. I'm not going to get to be with my children anymore. Or friends, people I love and respect. And so, if we have a flare-up, it evaporates now. I don't want to waste time being angry at someone I love.

It may be a brief interruption - just a few seconds - but what if someone sitting near you is trying to make a decent bootleg? Did you ever think of that? Now all those street-corner copies are permanently defiled by your so-called 'emergency.' Don't be so damn selfish.

When I received my first paycheck from my now known day job, I spent it on a period Craftsman chair and a Frank Lloyd Wright-wannabe lamp. With my second paycheck, I bought a stereo.

Jesse [James] was known as a kind of Robin Hood character and also it was known that his exploits were somewhat dubious - however, he perpetuated this myth. Our film [The Assassination of Jesse James] really takes place at the end of all that, the last year of his life, at the end of all that celebrity.

My kids are just waiting for me at home. I'm their father. They're wondering, 'When's Daddy coming home?'

Basically when you whittle everything away, I'm a grown man who puts on makeup.