Happy Birthday Sean Penn!

There's a lot of mediocrity being celebrated, and a lot of wonderful stuff being ignored or discouraged.

In school, I was a genius of the year preceding the year I was in, every year.

I like to believe that love is a reciprocal thing, that it can't really be felt, truly, by one.

We've let the blade of our innocence dull over time, and it's only in innocence that you find any kind of magic, any kind of courage.

That on a romantic level, if you feel it about somebody and it's pure, it means that they do too.

When I buy a Nikon camera, I have no tolerance for the instructions. I'm ready to make some mistakes using it and get some bad pictures back until I've figured it out for myself.

Anger can be a problem, but it has tremendous potential, too. It's just figuring out what to do with it.

I think life's an irrational obsession.

I'm always frustrated when somebody makes a movie out of a book and they leave the book behind, or the heart of it.

Child-rearing is my main interest now. I'm a hands-on father.

I love acting, truly my favorite people are actors.

Marriage ain't easy, but it's great most of the time.

My favorite thing to do is not act - it's that simple.

At this stage, what would be rewarding would be for audiences to want to watch.

I love stories about people who are smart enough to know that what they're doing is destroying them, but that knowing that doesn't help them.

In between, I go broke because I seem to do movies where you're not paid a lot as an actor.

There are a few directors around who I have some excitement about spending my $7 at the theatre watching their movies.

You try to do your best at what you're getting paid for.

The thing that's very close in the process is writing and acting, not directing. Directing's very different.

I live in the energy and rhythm of the character. To some degree, that's true of every actor I've worked with.

Sacrificing American soldiers or innocent civilians in an unprecedented preemptive attack on a separate sovereign nation may well prove itself a most temporary medicine.

Craft comes into acting later rather than sooner. I was somebody who had to learn through a process - a natural actor doesn't need to.

I can always see light in any situation. It's just the way I'm made.

When you act in a film, you're inevitably surrounded by people you didn't choose, right down to the set painter. I like being able to pick the family I'm waking up to in the morning that's going to make this group effort to tell a story that applies to what's interesting to me at that stage in my life.

You're always having to live more to fuel something new. It's an obligation to yourself and to the audience. The personal baggage that comes with being a known actor just adds to that struggle.