It's good filmmaking when you don't have to say anything and you can still tell the story.

There's no room for being a visionary in the studio system. It literally cannot exist. You give Terrence Malick a movie like Transformers, and he's f***ed. There's no way for him to exist in that world... Lars Von Trier's dangerous. He scares me. And I'm only going to work now when I'm terrified.

I'd love to go to school and have a normal life, but I don't see any professor at Yale being able to teach me more than Steven Spielberg.

Having emotional connections to things that don't really exist, like looking at a green ball and really loving that green ball, and being sad whether it's around or not. Stuff like that. I've never done acting at this level before so it was a huge challenge for me. It was a hurdle to overcome just to survive.

There's a form of selling out. It's necessary. You have to become edible for people in Texas. You have to become edible for the Christian right, for mass audiences.

You never really meet a human being until you live with them or know them for awhile, so this is my clown and they understand that and so these interviews don't bother them.

People were going to geometry class and I was swimming through vats of chili on 'Even Stevens.' It was like a dream!