Quotes from Casey Affleck

I love getting ready to do a scene, and thinking about it, and talking about it. But the rest of the time, I'm so nervous and obsessed. I'm just tearing my hair out in the trailer. The whole time I'm really tense.

In my movies, there has been little to do in the way of animal rights. I have never worked in a movie with animals. No horse-riding, no trained dogs, lions, bears. A few actors, but what could I do? We had to have them.

I find that I kind of have to sink into the character.

Most of my acting jobs have resulted in a series of mortifying revelations spread over years and years following the shoot.

When I was young, I asked my priest how you could get to Heaven and still protect yourself from all the evil in the world. He told me what God said to his children. You are sheep among wolves. Be wise as serpents, yet innocent as doves.

The first dog I had was owned by an abusive couple. He was very skittish. He wouldn't let me hold him. It was explained to me that it was because of how he was treated.

You sleep with people all the time that you hate.

I feel like whenever I do a movie, people think, 'Well, that's good, but that's probably the best he'll do.' I sort of bang and bang and kick in a door, and people say, 'Now a million doors will open for you.' And they don't.

I've run into people who say, 'I know what you're like: You're a Boston guy.' That's so weird. This person who doesn't know anything about me thinks they know a lot because of the city I grew up in, which, to me, is a meaningless label. There are all kinds of people from Boston.

What is acceptable in our culture, I think, is really detrimental. I think we ought to have a little more ownership over the kind of material and the content that we put in front of people, especially young people.

When you're the younger brother, usually it's not that common that you're having these experiences that your older brother is in awe of.

Sometimes in the middle of a presidential campaign, there's a political movie, and people are sick of hearing about politics, and they don't want to see that movie. They'd rather see "Godzilla."

I believe veganism can be beneficial for the individual and the world, and of course the animal, but belief is like laying in the dark with someone and telling them you love them and hearing nothing back. So I've never had the confidence to get on a soapbox and tell someone else what to do.

I live in New York full time. I can't live in L.A., because I fear people think I'm a vagrant there. If you show up in L.A. with your shirt inside out or socks mismatched, people start putting change in your cup.

They wanted me to do Scream 2, and I hate talking about movies I turned down, because it sounds judgmental. There's nothing wrong with horror movies. I enjoy watching them. The main reason I turn a part down is if I think I won't be good.

I think David Letterman is a genius. Night after night he is funny and smart. He seems to really enjoy his jokes. They seem connected to who he really is. I like watching him, and there is no one better at turning an awkward moment into something very funny.

If you have kids, you feel everything stronger. It's like someone turning the lights on in your inner room.

My first exposure to TV, film, theater, the idea of what acting was, is I was a little kid, and my mom's best friend was a local casting director in Cambridge, Mass. Her name was Patty Collinge.

If I can't see the humor in it, how am I going to be funny?

I have a very bad relationship with mice.

My mom has a good way of engaging me in a conversation about the choices I make, listening, being objective and open-minded, and respecting those choices so long as they don't put me in danger.

I get offered a lot of the same type of thing... The teenage slasher movies.

Why can't people just say they were moved? Why do they have to say it's sappy?

Talking to other people about a part is not helpful for me. It's such an internal and complicated and still kind of mysterious process.