David Quotes

The critical mind is the creative mind.

I wouldn't say we were doing that. I think we probably stopped thinking. Though it took a while to stop thinking.

I don't discount belief. I just discount most of the things that people believe in.

Willie Mays was the best ever. When I was in college I once made a catch like the one Mays made over his head. Sometimes when I'm lying in bed at night I think about it. It still makes me warm.

I'm not reading currently because I'm getting revisions of a novel. If I read while I'm writing I will unconsciously plagiarize and go to jail.

Maybe with "Californication" the character was partly based on Rick Moody. I read him and Jay McInerney, the templates for this bad boy novelist.

I'm very proud of my Scottish blood.

If you have Darwin, Christ and Nietzsche, they're all going to talk at once. You need somebody who listens.

In the U.S., oddly, we have images of men as arrogant and aggressive.

It's always like you write a poem when you can't really say what you're trying to say.

I'll instinctively know that I identify with a character.

I wouldn't succeed at musical theater.

In this age of media and Internet access, we are much more talkative than ever before.

I mean, you always want everybody to pat you on the back and tell you you're wonderful every time you do something; I think that's human nature.

If my work was good enough, I would never have to do publicity.

Actually, I have an interest in finishing my Ph.D., but I just know I never will.

I also watch a lot of really bad television when I'm writing, "Like Dancing With the Stars," with my daughter.

I don't want to know what happens in any movie that I go to see.

I will read biographies or autobiographies while I'm writing, but mostly I put books in a to-read queue, like Rachel Cusk's new novel, "Outline."

Maybe the best things about celebrity are the things like being able to get that seat on the plane that you wouldn't normally get, but that's kind of like cheating.

I don't make decisions based on money.

I don't need my phone to play me music. I need it to be a phone and an e-mail thing.

Linda Brewer's example is inspiring, colorful and potentially very funny. Her journey also exists firmly in the Heartland tradition of American success stories and comedies.

Dogs are the broccaflower of the animal kingdom.

When I grew up, I was in Manhattan the whole time. But my kids have been all over the world.

I don't like watching people work if they're making art.

Humility is considered an un-masculine quality.

Part of being an actor is letting things come about organically as opposed to forcing them.

I was about 26 or 27 and it was imperative that I make a living right away and it's hard to make a living on stage, so I started in television and film.

My favorite parts of work as an actor and a director are those unplanned mistakes that do happen, because it's like catching lightning in a bottle. It's the best part of what we do.

I reread "Ball Four" by Jim Bouton, the father of all sports books. Aside from that, and books like "Out of Their League" by Dave Meggyesy, sports books generally pull their punches.

I think [kids] enjoy reading, but it's a different world now. There are a lot of competitors for the imaginative attention.

I would say recently I've gotten back to perusing [Samuel] Beckett's novels. Listening to the way Donald Trump speaks without saying anything has made me think about language.

Becoming an actor made me way more interested in plot.

As I've gotten older I've become a devotee of 19th-century authors, such as Charles Dickens and George Eliot.

I mean, there's chemistry in life and there's acting chemistry. I'm not saying they're the same thing, but they're as mysterious.

The only problem with Mitch [Pileggi, the actor who plays Skinner] is that his bald head means there's nothing to hold onto when he starts to buck.

TV directors just aren't sexy for some reason, Although, you know, Rob and Kim [Manners] are very sexy in my eyes.

If Fox Mulder discovered that Larry Sanders was a clone? I think he would stab him . . . but it wouldn't be with an ice pick.

I really enjoy taking an outdoor shower.

We like to keep the sexual tension underplayed, especially between the Smoking Man and me. Once we thought he was my father . . . it got more interesting.

I had to work in one of the most beautiful ski resorts in the world for almost three weeks. Pity me.

I enjoy trying to figure out the best way to compliment the picture and not overpower it.

A lot of times passion projects or films are difficult to make because they don't have proven directors attached to them.

At one time there were voiceover artists, now there are celebrity voiceover artists. It's unfortunate because these people need the money less than the voiceover artist.

I'm actually thinking about getting back to being a bath tub. I don't think anyone's ever quite segued into that.

If young actors ask me things, I always tell them to get on set and watch how it's done. If you can, watch the people that you like, how they work.

It's rare in movies or even in life where somebody owns up to their needs. I guess in a relationship it's the only way it has a chance to survive it.

A bath tub, apparently, was the first thing I wanted to be.

We all know people for that length of time and people change. They mature. There is a certain expectation that a fictional character does not change. But you can't go back and play him the same way.