Annette Bening should've won Oscar for American Beauty. I mean, I know Hilary Swank was there, she was so great too... Annette deserves one. She better win. I'm an Academy voter, and I voted for her.

If I could stomach the awful part of being a veterinarian, which involves sticking your hand up animals' behinds, I would be a vet.

One out of forty American men wears women's clothing. We've had more than forty presidents. One of these guys has been dancing around the Oval Office in a prom dress.

One of the things I love about acting is other actors, looking into their eyes, and working off them, and listening and responding to them.

Someone said I wasn't attractive enough. People say those things, but they make you stronger. Then you can win an Emmy and think, ha, ha, ha.

It is a very difficult job, being the servant of two masters.

I love wasting time and learning to lip-sync to songs; it's a silly hobby of mine.

I'm afraid of flying.

It's a great way to start the day, hearing you've been nominated for an Emmy. It's just thrilling.

Great drama is all about conflict, and what's a better conflict than Republican-Democrat?

I never stop. I don't want to stop acting because I'm afraid it'll all end, so I never say no.

And yet Curt’s a real writer too. His machinery is stuck, that’s all.

i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses

...to speak of them out loud, to speak of their hunger and pain and loneliness and humour, to make them visible so that can not be ravaged in the dark without great consequence.

I've worked out a Ninja Replacement Score for novels. It's basically the number of characters that need to be replaced by ninjas to make the book good.

I prefer a cluttered workspace.

You know, they say when someone keeps making excuses to say your name it means they like you.

I write very rarely. Only, in fact, when the sheet of paper suffers an existential crisis and threatens, if I don't surrender to it, to bury me alive under its whiteness.

I'm trying to do the kind of projects that I want to see in the theatre.

I knew well in advance even before I stepped on the stage for my first event that I was going to lose.

I'm not just an actor born in L.A. I was born in the Griffith Park Hospital. You can't get any more clichéd than that.