You always end up getting involved in things because of, you know, the strange things your life brings you into contact with.

When people come together too young, they try to become one person. As you get older, you realize that you don't want to become one person because then you lose the person you are.

Any questions I had about whether a redneck from Oklahoma could become a Brown Classical Philosophy professor ended when I met Tim [Blake Nelson].

I've observed over and over that people seem to get a much deeper sense of fulfillment out of something they've done as an act of service than out of the things they do for themselves.

The more you do your homework, the more you're free to be intuitive. But you've got to put the work in.

To me, Fight Club was a comedy. When [David] Fincher sent me the book and I read it, the first thing I asked him was, "This is a comedy, right?" he said, "Yeah, that's the whole point," and I said, "Okay, I'm in." I certainly wasn't imagining myself as a dramatic actor when I was running around in my underwear in that film.

Most of the movies that I've made that I really felt good about and cared about made very little money anyway, so I'm not particularly worried about people downloading and sharing them.