Anything that is absurd I see as a Coen brothers' influence! The Coen brothers are my favorite people period.

I love the whole of California, I have places... my whole thing is with all the money I make, I just want to buy as many places in California as I can because I love it.

I remember at the premiere of my second movie I started crying. I thought, I'm so bad that I either have to stop this and do something else or learn what I'm doing.

Regardless of whether there was ballot manipulation or not, you still have 50 million people who voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 election. And why? Because he's fallible? Because he reminds you of us? That's what we do. We are hiring these people. They don't hire themselves. It's irresponsible to disregard this guy as some bumbling, blathering idiot who has no intelligence whatsoever.

I've never gotten bitter about where I was at in my career. I've always earned enough money to put my kids through school and eat and all that, so I was never one of those guys who said, "Why am I not in this other position? Why am I not that other guy? Why am I me?"

I got picked on a lot. I was a complete geek in school. I had braces. I didn't have the hot girlfriend. I wasn't ever sought after. I was a stocky, awkward kid who got laughed off the tennis court when I tried that.

I do think, from the other side, that George W. ush was somewhat of an innocent in his thinking about what Ronald Reagan did during the Cold War and by bringing democracy to Eastern Europe. I think he believed that he could do the same thing by bringing democracy - or Midland, Texas, really - to the Middle East. I truly think he felt it was possible. "I want to do for the Middle East what Reagan did for the Soviet Union."