One of the things that's awesome about being an actor is that you get to do stories, live lives and have experiences that you never could have even conceived of, and that's because you're living in another writer's imagination and another director's imagination.

A couple of compromises in a row and suddenly you're very far way from the person you thought you were.

What I like about acting is that you have to be super, super present in the moment. That's not something that comes to me naturally. But if you take the long view on anything, nothing can really affect you or knock you down. It's like, we're here for a blink, we're just the human experiment, one of many experiments going on in the universe, and it's interesting, it's beautiful by fits and starts, but I can't take it that personally. I'm just one of billions of people attempting.

When I go into a pitch room and I'm pitching something with a writing partner, everybody tends to look at the guy, even if I'm doing a lot of the talking.

Sometimes big budget means explosions! CGI! CGI, the possibilities are so limitless that it begins to be impractical. I'm more interested in the kinds of movies where the science fiction world has a set series of rules and you operate in it because of, maybe, constraints in the budget.

I didn't understand how you could be an actor if you didn't also study philosophy and study political science, astronomy. And also just go out and live life and have experiences.

One of my favorite stories growing up was 'A Wrinkle in Time'. I loved that book.