"I feel close to Lloyd in 'Say Anything'. 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."

"The movies have got more corporate, they're making fewer movies in general, and those they are making are all $200-$300m tent-pole releases that eat up all the oxygen."

"I was a teen star. That's disgusting enough."

"It's something we, guys, have all done. Made tapes for girls, trying to impress them, to meet them on a shared plane of aesthetics. Read them someone else's poetry because they do poetry better than you could do it, because you're too awkward to do it."

"A quiet mind perceives the subtle truths that noisy ambitions constantly drown out — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance."

"I think that clearly it has an influence, to be coming of age during the punk rock era, to come from a difficult and sporadically violent background, to have been in and out of such chaos, I think it actually helps. But I don't know for sure."

"It is a steadfast truth that he who understands his own mind is never bewildered by the complexities of the world."