Kurt Vonnegut wasn't a chatty guy, but when he spoke, it was always clear and very funny, in the way that he wrote, in a very specific kind of combination of word groupings and expressions that lived somewhere else.

Theater for me is terrifying but much more rewarding, because you know what they're seeing. Film is all little bits and pieces. And you can do an amazing job, but if the camera isn't getting it, it doesn't work. And then other times when you feel you really weren't present, and then you see it and somehow it works. So there's a mystery, there's a strange collaboration that takes place with everybody.

To know that once you decide to look at life outside of the narrow limits of just your world and start to understand that you can make a difference in very simple ways - in volunteering and all the way up to bigger world problems.

So I would hope they would develop some kind of habit that involves understanding that their life is so full they can afford to give in all kinds of ways to other people. I consider that to be baseline spirituality.

You have to take away the idea that something you do is right or wrong. I don't think there's a right or a wrong; I think there's an "it works" or "it doesn't work" for the whole. And that's why you need a director you trust, so you can just keep throwing out suggestions.

Acting is kind of a forced compassion, where you learn that given certain circumstances, you can feel and do things that you never thought yourself capable of. And so it stops you from being super-judgmental.

I look forward to being older, when what you look like becomes less and less an issue and what you are is the point.