As a boy Id often spend my days biking on riverbeds and arroyos and come home exhausted. I realize now how much I took for granted having the natural world so close at hand. It wasnt until I moved away, first to New York and then to Los Angeles, that I realized how much I missed the outdoors.

My TV show had been cancelled; nothing else had gone anywhere; some alliances I had made petered out and nothing came of them and I was looking at a long, long year ahead of me in which there was no work on the horizon, the phone wasn't ringing. I had two kids, one of them a brand-new baby, and I didn't know if I would be able to keep my house.

I am who I am, and I think I have a good nature, by and large. But if someone takes advantage of that good nature, well then, you know, I'm not that nice a guy.

There's a difference between solitude and loneliness. I can understand the concept of being a monk for a while.

Mass-market movies have become about one thing. They kind of declare themselves right off the bat. . . . But when I go to see (a film), I want to be surprised. I want to see something I never expected. And when you get that, it should be celebrated.

Reading a script is usually as exciting as reading a boilerplate legal document, so when you read one that makes you feel as if you're seeing the movie, you know it's something different.

Let's not pretend there isn't a huge industry driven by the choices made by editors and writers who decide what a story is.