Quotes from Thomas Jane

We're in the doing business, or acting business and creating business. We're not in the results business, so we don't have any control over what the result is. My reward comes in the doing of it.

Earlier on in my career I felt that I had to hide behind a lot of different masks, and showboat ways of performing. Now, that's a lie. The less I have to hide, the less I have to act.

Places where prostitution is legal, you find much better health care, fewer cases of disease and illegal abortions. There's really nothing to be gained by keeping prostitution illegal.

I can't stand to see myself act. It just makes me cringe.

I just have a respect for my audience. That seems to be pretty logical.

I'll tell you what - it's not a choice until you're open enough to experience both male and female sexuality. Until you've tasted the food, you don't know whether you'll like it or not, as my mom always said.

Anything that has to do with noir and space, I'm gonna love. When you've got a noir-ish, pulpy detective in a science fiction show, I'm all in, in that regard.

That's what I think is the neat thing about TV: how alive it is and how the writers respond to the stimulus that they're getting from the actual actors. Whereas a movie is more hermetically sealed.

It's kind of true that they just start making the same movie over and over again. It's also true that the times dictate what kind of movies get made and what kind are not. So I'm always looking for something that's a little fresh and something that I haven't seen before.

To stand there and do nothing on film is probably the hardest thing to do.

I think all good drama is funny. All the best drama is ultimately very funny. Life is funny. You can't have any honest treatise on life without bumping into some humor.

People lose people, we lose things in our life as we're constantly growing and changing. That's what life is is change, and a lot of that is loss. It's what you gain from that loss that makes life.

Great directors turn in mediocre work, and first-time directors turn in exceptional work. No matter how good a person can talk about what he wants, you never know. You just have to go with a good story and a script that you like and people that you like to work with.

Terry Malick offered me three parts in 'The Thin Red Line.' I was busy shooting other movies while he asked me the first two.

I'm interested in people that don't always do the right thing, its much more akin to what I know about life.

You grow up as an artist in a big city. As James Dean said, you're going to have one arm tied behind your back if you don't accept people's sexual flavors. You know, when I was a kid out here in L.A., I was homeless; I didn't have any money, and I was living in my car. I was 18.

I'm of the mind that life is a risk, every time you leave your house it's a risk, and I see no reason to go through life with my hands tied behind my back for any reason. I'd be foolish to let something stop me from doing what I love to do.

Conformity is painful. You know, it's too tight. Conformity leads to rebellion. So a desire for happiness is in direct conflict with a desire for freedom.

I think what makes us human - is our interconnectedness among people. It's our ability to form and maintain relationships. It's the barometer by which we call ourselves human.

Some days are more intense and quiet, and then other days, you feel more relaxed and are able to open up on set. It just depends on what you're doing that day. I like to imagine that all the choices you make during the day that you're doing a particular scene are going to feed into the creation of that scene.

A buddy of mine is doing a documentary on decisions, and they're not based on a ton of logic. It's mostly how you relate to them emotionally.

America is immature as a nation, and part of the reason why 'Hung' is a hit show is because it deals with that immature side of the male brain where we are kind of comparing ourselves to the rest of the world.

I'm interested in the impact my movies have on people and how it affects them, and what they like and what they don't like - and what they take away from it. What leaves an impression, you know?

I still collect comics. I still have a great love and respect for the genre.