I never stopped studying Buddhism. In the past few years in between movies I do a retreat.

For a number of years I'd been around the kind of people who financed movies and the kind of people who are there to make the deals for movies. But I'd always had this naive idea that everybody wants to make movies as good as they can be which is stupid.

By the way movies are like sporting events in that you're as good as the movie you're in. You can sit in a room for 20 years and go do a movie and you can just kill in it and you move to the head of the line again. By the same token you can do five movies a year and if they're dreck it's nothing.

I love it man I'm 23 years old and I'm lucky enough to write movies as a job! I just feel really blessed and can't believe it's happening.

I never think it's right to chew gum in front of other people but a lot of times I'll come in for a meeting chewing gum and I'll forget I'm chewing it. Then you don't want to swallow it because it stays in your system for seven years or something so I've asked to throw it away. I've started to wonder if that's why I didn't get certain movies.

Most of the movies I saw growing up were viewed as totally disposable fine for quick consumption but they have survived 50 years and are still growing.

I've been on so many movies. Generally I haven't gotten to be on the ground level. As of two years ago in 'Dear John ' I got to really be on the ground floor. I wasn't a producer. I felt like I put the work in and I did have a lot of sway on what got fixed reshoots so on and so forth. It felt really good.

Even if we die at 100 we're still dying young. I want at least 700 years. There's a lot of travelling and books to read and movies to see. I'm not going to squeeze it all in in 85 years.

I took acting classes in college and once I graduated I decided to give acting a shot when I couldn't really think of anything else to do. It took me a couple of years to get an agent and my first big break was The Fanelli Boys which was a sitcom on NBC. Then I did a few television movies.

I had a daughter who was 9 years old and I had the feeling I wasn't going to be a real parent if I didn't quit making movies for a while and spend time with her. I also felt that I'd made enough movies and said what I had to say at the time.

Over the years with movies I've given directors notes.

The nature of the movies is different than it was five years ago and they're all driven by the possibilities of CGI which means you can make anything happen on screen that you can possibly desire.

I remember looking through magazines or watching movies even just a couple of years ago and being like 'I really want to be part of that ' but not realizing what that was.

I think being self-referential is really narcissistic. Who's to say anybody's even thinking of you that much? But some of these movies that I've done people still recite lines to me even 20 years later.

You have to read scripts and audition and develop relationships. It takes a long time to develop a body of work but over the last 25 years I guess I've done that many movies. In hindsight it may seem effortless but there's a lot of work that goes into it.

I like to direct movies but I don't like to goof around for eight years talking about it.

I played Winnie Cooper on 'The Wonder Years' from ages 12-18 and did a few other movies during some of the summers.

I will make action movies I think for a few more years another five years.

When we talk about how movies used to be made it was over 100 years of film literal physical film with emulsion that we would expose to light and we would get pictures.

I never really got nightmares from movies. In fact I recall my father saying when I was three years old that I would be scared but I never was.

I've seen many many movies over the years and there are only a few that suddenly inspire you so much that you want to continue to make films.

Later on they send me to Hollywood. To make movies. It was all new to me. I was only 21 years old.

Over the years all these vampire movies have come out and nobody looks like a vampire anymore.

Give me a couple of years and I'll make that actress an overnight success.