Peter Sarsgaard quotes:

It is very possible that I could have ended up on 80 acres of land by myself, and fallen in love at a distance with a gorgeous woman I could never have been with.

You want to do something, you want to have the bravery to do something original. And there will always be people who are like, the classicists who are like, 'No, but it's got to have this.' In life, there are people like that attached to every single thing that there is. These are the same people that are like, still playing vinyl.

If all the circumstances of acting are made to easy, then there's no grain of sand to make the pearl.

I like working with a first time director. I'm more likely to work with a first time director than I am a second time director.

To me, one of the main things that a director does is create the tone of his movie.

I always think change is important in a character. The most dynamic choices that you can make for a character are always the best ones.

I like anything that is like an obstruction, something that I have to act through is good.

I think one of the things that might distinguish me is when I'm going to work as an actor I really try not to worry about my own personal hang-ups and just really concentrate on the work. Because I have such a respect for acting, which is something I feel like I'm constantly learning how to do, that all of my energy is always focused on the acting itself.

Depending on what stage I'm at in my career, I either work or don't work because I've been offered one thing.

I just pick the best roles that are left over, and they usually aren't the heterosexual, leading-man, non-drug-addict parts. And once you get into doing them, people know you do them.

I see how people boss other actors around to try to get a scene favorable to them. I absolutely just never engage in doing that. If someone's going to do it to me, I just let them have it.

I would like to sail across the Atlantic. I would like the experience of being that far away from land.

If I want to keep working as an actor, I'm going to become a comedian who does fart jokes.

I've always looked at the world as a place where people have done evil things. There are people in the world, for instance, that would describe Americans as evil.

Usually the way I think someone is radicalized is through a personal experience. The thing about environmental activism is that we are all having a personal experience with our environment, whether we open our eyes or not.

Four hours of makeup, and then an hour to take it off. It's tiring. I go in, I get picked up at two-thirty in the morning, I get there at three. I wait four hours, go through it, ready to work at seven, work all day long for twelve hours, and get it taken off for an hours, go home and go to sleep, and do the same thing again.

Even a good politician, someone who is very ambitious, chooses not to see trouble.

I don't spend a lot of time judging anyone I play. Even if their function in the script is to be the villain, I concentrate on what their perspective of the events is. Not even to justify them.

I frequently gravitate toward characters that have some urgency or soul.

I like to work as an actor. Not just for money, but because I really enjoy acting.

I mean I don't think it got me interested in acting. I think it might be what makes it so that I can have the idea of the variety of people in the world, different incomes. That helps. When you're going to play someone it's interesting and nice to see experiences that aren't like yours. But there's always the remarkable similarity of all people.

I tend to lose my performance energy the longer things go on for, so I'm always best on the very first take.

If no one on the movie has met me before or knows me, that's the easiest. I don't do a lot of things that don't relate to being the person. I will try to keep it going for my other actors. I want them to do the least amount of pretending as possible.

If you go in and audition for roles rather than just be offered them, then you kind of get a chance to kind of discover that you can do something that you didn't think you could do.

Im okay with being unimpressive. I sleep better.

The oceans are pretty unexplored places and the final frontier on our planet; also because they're the source of life. There are dramatic things happening to them at the moment, and they're worth exploring.

The only way to silence a room that's laughing at you is to sort of take over.

Who would I least want to hang out with? Probably John Lotter. I guess I have a place of understanding for everyone I've played.

Words are words, but the way an actor says them, the way it's framed, puts you either in the world that looks a lot like ours or one that doesn't seem a lot like ours, one that can be farcical or one that can't.

I don't really worry about being typecast much. I mean, everyone in Hollywood is typecast to a degree.