When I got out of college I moved to Seattle because it was the nearest big city and still didn't know if I wanted to be a composer, conductor, singer, actor. I just got day jobs and auditioned and took what came and the theater doors were the ones opening the most.

And if I may, call your mom, everybody. I've told this [to], like, a billion people, or so. Call your mom, call your dad. If you're lucky enough to have a parent or two alive on this planet, call 'em. Don't text. Don't email. Call them on the phone. Tell 'em you love 'em, and thank them, and listen to them for as long as they want to talk to you. Thank you. Thank you, Mom and Dad.

Science isn't about WHY, it's about WHY NOT!

In my work I try to get things right, to do it well, and if there are specific skills involved - like in a case conducting or playing the piano, or in this film I have coming up where I play a character who is German - I'm very meticulous about learning accents and dialects and those kinds of things. That's probably the closest I come to being a perfectionist.

I was not a giant comic book fan as a kid, but to the extent that I did read comics, Spider-Man was always my favorite guy.

I like to act. Every other aspect of show business I find uninteresting.

When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don't want your D*** lemons, what the h*** am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life's manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I'm the man who's gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I'm gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!