I think I've spent so much time playing characters that are so far away from me and learning how to technically build and how to technically put something on top of you.

The whole Twitter phenomenon is really indicative of what's happening in this country. And I say this in condemnation of myself as much as anyone else - we are growing into a nation that has no time desire or capacity for truth. All we can handle is 140 characters of knowledge.

Real-life people are often the hardest to play people that you recreate who have actually lived because you have to live up to people's knowledge of those characters.

Men are limited by the knowledge of their minds the worth of their characters and the principles upon which they are building their lives.

I'd love to play more challenging roles characters that would stretch my comfort zone and imagination.

I think it's fun to play with worlds that you can add a lot of your own imagination to. With 'True Blood ' you're not limited by anything there are just leaps and bounds of the imagination you can take with these characters.

I had been a reporter for 15 years when I set out to write my first novel. I knew how to research an article or profile a subject - skills that I assumed would be useless when it came to fiction. It was from my imagination that the characters in my story would emerge.

They are imaginary characters. But perhaps not solely the products of my imagination since there are some aspects of the characters that relate to my own experience of a wide variety of people.

I think films about men are often about characters who don't want to express their feelings. You're supposed to kind of admire them for not expressing their feelings. And I feel that's a bit dull. Women's stories often have stronger emotional content which I enjoy doing. What I really love doing is mixing that with humor.

Once we got over the origin story we could really delve deeper into their lives and characters and angst. So this movie actually has more heart more humor.

M*A*S*H offered real characters and everybody identified with them because they had such soul. The humor was intelligent and it always assumed that you had an intellect.

But because it was able to balance that kind of humor with a sweet story and characters you really rooted for and also got across the girls' point of view I've heard nothing but great things from younger and older females as well.

Back in 2004 Kellie Overbey handed me her play 'Girl Talk' to read. I fell in love with her brutally delicious humor and the fearlessly deft way in which she drew her characters. They jumped off the page and begged me to give them a space in which to stomp around.

With actors like Steve McQueen Paul Newman and Harrison Ford what made them such icons is that even in dramatic movies their characters had a sense of humor.

One of my favorite things about 'Star Trek' wasn't just the overt banter but the humor in that show about the relationships between the main characters and their reactions to the situations they would face there was a lot of comedy in that show without ever breaking its reality.

Feature-length film comedy is harder to pull off than the episodic sitcom - it doesn't have the same factory machinery up and running teams of writers putting familiar characters through permutations - but that doesn't explain the widening quality gap that makes movie humor look like a genetic defective.

When you're young you want to make every kind of film: musicals Westerns horror. Slowly you begin to hear your own voice. I hope people receive what I do as small personal films that are somewhat contrarian about their main characters.

You can't go around hoping that most people have sterling moral characters. The most you can hope for is that people will pretend that they do.

I hit the ground running without a lot of training so I had to do whatever I could do to survive as a professional and if that meant being that character 24/7 and acting out I was going to do that. I lived those characters I brought them home with me.

If you got a good imagination a lot of confidence and you kind of know what you are saying then you might be able to do it. I know a lot of colorful characters at home that would make great actors.

Since I was there in the very beginning I know the history of the characters. So I make comments about the tone and sometimes remind the writers that we've done that before.

I'm interested in the dark side of man. I'm interested in taboos and murder is the greatest taboo. Characters are fascinating in their extremity not in their happiness.

You need characters who want things. They want love they want recognition they want happiness.

I choose my friends for their good looks my acquaintances for their good characters and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.