New York`s like a boxing match. In Hollywood, it`s like a Fellini movie or something.

I have a bit of a rebellious nature.

If you`re going to get into social criticism with absurdity and satire, you can`t be politically correct when you do that.

I was raised Irish Catholic, but I don`t consider myself Irish Catholic: I consider myself me, an American.

I was never interested in being an overly public person.

The more you expose yourself as a celebrity, the less interesting you are to watch in your work, because if you`re putting yourself out there all the time, you`re not holding anything back.

The reason bin Laden staggered the planes going into the towers was so every camera would be focused on the second tower when the plane hit. It was not only the murder, but the perpetual image of the horror that permeated into people`s consciousness.

[on celebrity] "I have a healthy fear of it. I`m not into the celebrity culture aspect of being an artist. To me it represents extinction. The more people know about you, the less they want to try to figure out what you have to say in your movies, and the less credibility you have. To me it seems: Go do your thing, then get out. That`s the best way to do it." (January 14, 2004)

You think about the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died and all the soldiers who have come back wounded and maimed. You read the paper and four more soldiers last week died and mercenaries have killed 27 people in Baghdad, mercenaries who are getting money from our tax dollars that should be going to protect the troops, and I`m depressed about the Cubs game. There`s a disconnect there. My point in all seriousness is that it`s such an abstraction, and this government has asked us to sacrifice nothing for this. The troops are sacrificing everything. It just seems like an obscenity.

When applied to politics and taken to its extreme, kitsch is the mask of death. Fascism was all aesthetics. There was no core principle to it. There was no truth to it.

I love these movies where it`s just about the film. You don`t have my face on the poster. It`s all about the movie. I like that.

Death is a billion-dollar business. They can`t even pass a law where it takes seven days to get a gun. Why don`t you have to go through the same kind of screening you do to get a driver`s license? It`s totally insane.

I think when you get to the point where you don`t need to be in love, then you could be in love. You have to just be OK with yourself-and that`s a long process.

Being on a movie set is like one long financial crisis.

A lot of people are not meant to be together.

Art is spiritual.

There are some good people. But a good chunk of them will lie for no reason at all - it`ll be ten o`clock and they`ll tell you it`s nine. You`re looking at the clock and you can`t even fathom why they`re lying. They just lie because that`s what they do.

Hitler was so modern, in that he was obsessed with being famous. He was caught up with this rush to be have achieved greatness before turning 30.

Do I listen to pop music because I`m miserable or am I miserable because listen to pop music?

People try to keep their past, like kind of holding on to their past. Every Springsteen song talks about that.

The British keep employing me, and that makes me like them. It also makes me think they`re very intelligent.

I like the George Romero films, which were really great, social satire movies; really twisted.

Usually I play people who just keep babbling on and on and on.

Good actors can sort of see into people and immediately you have a chemistry with them or not. It`s like an affair with no mess.

The film is not a success until it makes money. It`s only good when there`s a dollar figure attached to the box office.

I feel like I`m a filmmaker; I don`t feel I need to yell action and cut.

Kitsch is more dangerous than it looks when taken to the extreme.

I`ve seen the people who talk about their love lives in print invariably have doomed relationships with the person they`re talking about.

Sometimes you meet people and you feel like you`ve known them for a long time.

I was raised Catholic until I was old enough to say no.

Any time you stop looking at evil as a black and white thing, it`s helpful. So the fact that there won`t be any obligatory Islamic terrorist stereotypes in movies any more, that`d be helpful.

I guess maybe I`m idealistic.

Martian Child was just a movie the studio [New Line Cinema] offered me and it was the best job I could get at the time. It was about a relationship between a guy and another kid, and I thought that was good. It was a sweet movie. They offered it to me and that was the extent of that. Grace Is Gone was something I REALLY wanted to do.

(On if he prefers Chicago or L.A.) Chicago`s a great city - definitely my favorite. But I`m more at home in L.A. because so many of my old friends are here now. I mean, I feel at home in both. What`s hard in Chicago is that I`m more conspicuous when I`m there. It`s harder to coast around.

I`ve made 10 good films. The ones that suck I tend to blank out. It`s like I never even made them. Well, there aren`t 40 that are great, put it that way. But that`s fine. Ten is a good batting average. (2007)

I`m aware of the affection those characters inspired. I feel close to Lloyd in Say Anything... (1989). He was like a super-interesting version of me. Only I`m not as good as him. Whatever part of me is romantic and optimistic, I reached into that to play Lloyd. Of course, now it`s all gone. Now I`m just bitter.

I won`t call myself a child actor because that sounds psychotic.

"Nope, no sex scandals yet. But I am open to offers!" (January 14, 2004)

I was a teen star. That`s disgusting enough.