Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.

One of the ways that we cope with anxiety is by over planning and over controlling. If we know where it's going to, we can just relax and do it. Unfortunately, in my experience, that's not the way it works. The story doesn't want to be told what to do. You have to enter into this process with a high level of trust that the many hours of choosing that you're doing every day will gradually clarify the narrative for you. And that's what happens.

The one thing about A Christmas Carol that always bothers me is that Cratchit is so sweet and perfect. He's like an Ivy League kid who just is labeled "poor." He doesn't have any bad habits. He's never cranky with his kids.

I know that my only chance at any kind of depth or profundity is to linger within the story, trying to make it distinguish itself.

It was that impossible thing: happiness that does not wilt to reveal the thin shoots of some new desire rising from within it.

I'm fascinated with actors, and I've never quite understood the process.

If you at least try to do the things that excite you, it will make you a more expansive and present person - you’ll feel, at the end of your life, that at least you took the shot.