My favorite parts of work as an actor and a director are those unplanned mistakes that do happen, because it's like catching lightning in a bottle. It's the best part of what we do.

Privacy is something I have come to respect. I think when I was younger I wanted to tell everybody everything, because I thought I was so damn interesting. Then I heard the snoring.

I'm a big Philip Roth fan. I think "American Pastoral" is the great American novel of the past 30 to 40 years. It's a novel about what happened in the 1960s, and I think America is still dealing with what happened then. It's devastatingly sad.

I don't know if [Samuel] Beckett is something you ever bring to the beach - get out of the water, towel off, and start reading some of "The Unnamable." Although, because it's the kind of book you can open to any page and start reading, it is beach reading in that way.

TV was the boogey man when I was growing up. Video games are the boogey man now. The novel was once a boogey man. Books about lowborn people doing lowborn things were once considered a real assault on people's morals. Maybe some day video games will be looked on as a good thing, but personally I don't see it.

It's always like you write a poem when you can't really say what you're trying to say.

Every time Mulder smiles, people say, 'God, it was great to see you smile. Mulder never smiles.' I say, 'Mulder smiles a whole lot. He smiles at least once a show.' People get these ideas in their heads and they're impossible to shake. But, to be honest with you, Mulder is every bit as vulnerable and quirky as Ally McBeal. I think Mulder has pretty good legs, too.