Every little thing that people know about you as a person impedes your ability to achieve that kind of terrific suspension of disbelief that happens ….

Sometimes we don't see certain things until we're ready to see them in a certain way..

I've always thought of acting as more of an exercise in empathy, which is not to be confused with sympathy. You're trying to get inside a certain emo….

It must be good to be in Germany and France, because I have completely forgotten what it is like to be proud of your government..

All people are paradoxical. No one is easily reducible, so I like characters who have contradictory impulses or shades of ambiguity. It's fun, and it….

Life, like poker has an element of risk. It shouldn't be avoided. It should be faced..

There are so many people who are conscientious and caring about others. I've spent time working in countries where I really noticed the absence of ci….

Popularity is the slutty little cousin of prestige, my friend..

As we say in the sewer, if you're not prepared to go all the way, don't put your boots on in the first place..

The more you can create that magic bubble, that suspension of disbelief, for a while, the better..

I don't have anything to prove to anybody, which is a lovely place to be..

The more you do your homework, the more you're free to be intuitive. But you've got to put the work in..

It's dismaying to see the unilateralism that the government is doing..

Instead of telling the world what you're eating for breakfast, you can use social networking to do something that's meaningful..

When people come together too young, they try to become one person. As you get older, you realize that you don't want to become one person because th….

I started, with three friends, this website called Crowdrise that's sort of the Facebook for personal philanthropy, a place where anybody can have a ….

I've observed over and over that people seem to get a much deeper sense of fulfillment out of something they've done as an act of service than out of….

People think because I went to Yale that that implies privilege, and it is a privilege in the sense that it's an incredible opportunity..

At this point in my life I'm not bent on proving anything, really..

I tend to relate to a character in terms of the arc: what's interesting is where he starts versus where he ends up..

The best films of any kind, narrative or documentary, provoke questions..