In terms of jobs, I'm an actor. There's gotta' be depth there. I'd never say yes to something just to play the hot guy. That's not what I'm interested in.

Personally I don't believe in bad people. I think there's always a reason for people acting badly.

I'm constantly embarrassed at the level of attention actors get and the level of money that we get. It's completely disproportionate.

A character on screen that's the 'good guy' or the 'bad guy,' they're never interesting. There's got to be an internal struggle, the duality is important to find.

In movies we tend make things black and white: you're either this, or you're that.

I don't want to ever think that I don't know what to do. I want to deal with my own things, to perform my own roles, to be like, "I did this."

I've lived in California for six years and I've never surfed.

TV is a very sensitive thing. If you're not happy with what you're doing, I don't think you should do it because you will do it for awhile.

I come from a family of pacifists, so it's not like I was going to join the war. Sweden is not like the States or England where you might get sent to Afghanistan next month.

Sweden is a small country and, well, our family's pretty prominent in that world, I guess. And I really didn't like the sound of just being 'the fourth acting Skarsgard.

I have three older brothers, and each one of them has chosen one of my parents' education. Two of them are actors, and the third is a doctor as my mother is.

Too much fame, money or alcohol can make you stupid

Every answer I seek lies within me. Any outward seeking for my answers can only take me as far as my inner self permits.

The truth is, Jesus didn't die for junk.

Sometimes you feel as though you've slandered yourself, but the joke's on them.

For me at age 11, I had a pair of binoculars and looked up to the moon, and the moon wasn't just bigger, it was better. There were mountains and valleys and craters and shadows. And it came alive.

I am for anything that makes teens visible in an honest way... in other words, anything that represents them the way they are, positively or negatively.

That ignorant confidence in one's self and one's future, which comes in life's first dawn, has a sort of mournful charm in experienced eyes, who know how much it all amounts to.

The greatest virtue is to follow the Way utterly.

I had to decide what I was going to do, and what I was going to be. I was standing there, waiting for someone to do something , till I realised the person I was waiting for was myself.

It is what a man does for strangers that counts more than what he does for his family.