See, I don't get the sense that you need to direct at all. Sometimes I get the opposite sensation from you, that you're like, "I really should go do something else." But then you are drawn back in by a particular story, like a hangnail in the brain.

I always felt that acting was an escape, like having the secret key to every door and permission to go into any realm and soak it up. I enjoy that free pass.

Life, like poker has an element of risk. It shouldn't be avoided. It should be faced.

I do subscribe to the maxim that generally comedy is like jazz. Either you get it or you don't. You can't learn it and you can't be taught it. I don't think that if you are not a funny person, you can fake it.

Everyone keeps saying the western's dead, but it's not.

When I was about 16 or 17, I had a teacher who took a group of us to the National Theater in Washington, D.C., and I saw Ian McKellen do his one-man show - I think it was called Acting Shakespeare - and it completely bombed me; it put the zap on my brain in a big way.

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