I'm such a bookworm, and I'm such a people-watcher. It took the Internet a while to catch on in Ireland, because the culture there is, you go to the pub and talk to people there, and that's how you get the news and all the gossip. You just do it face to face. And culturally, you just couldn't understand.

I've had some pretty good arguments with people, but I've never regretted it. I've had people come up where it's all emotion and no fact. That's always sad.

You can be an amateur and have a passion for something, but it takes a long time to actually become a professional, meaning that you can handle any situation.

I had a romance novel inside me, but I paid three sailors to beat it out if me with steel pipes.

I love doing movies, but right now, television is the way Hollywood was in the late '60s and early '70s. The dream era I would have loved to have been part of in Hollywood then is happening right now, but it's happening on television, with these big complicated story arcs and real character-driven shows and sheer ambiguity left and right.

I really had to imagine the kind of person that I would have been if I had never left my hometown... I don't think I would have been a very pleasant person.

The truly great actors, like Charlize Theron, are just like, "I'm an actor. For hire. I show up, I do my job." There's no "I'm just waiting for the inspiration." They just do their jobs. They say, "Let's go over the scene a few times and get it."