There are so many family dinners you can do. I eventually had to go to them and say, 'Look, I don't do spatula work. I don't do scenes with oven mitts. If you're looking for that, you've got the wrong guy. I'm not doing scenes about casseroles. It's not happening.

They (teenage boys)don’t really listen to speeches or talks. They absorb incrementally, through hours and hours of observation.

I think it was Alfred Hitchcock who said 90 percent of successful moviemaking is in the casting. The same is true in life. Who you are exposed to, who you choose to surround yourself with, is a unique variable in all of our experiences and it is hugely important in making us who we are. Seek out interesting characters, tough adversaries and strong mentors and your life can be rich, textured, highly entertaining and successful, like a Best Picture winner. Surround yourself with dullards, people of vanilla safety and unextraordinary ease, and you may find your life going straight to DVD.

I had to learn American sign language. And I did stuff in it, stuff that was just for me and was fun, that I don't think anyone would ever notice.

My looks have prevented people from seeing my work.

I remember Tucker Toomey was named so because "T's are funny!" And if Garry Marshall says it's funny, by god, it must be so.

To go from "gnarly" to "literally," that shows I'm growing up, right?