Justin Theroux

When you're wanting to delve into something, it's the one thing that cable television lets you achieve, in a way where you can have long form. There are no defined chapters. There are scenes, but everything's not bookended by a Chevy commercial.

I can speak passable Mandarin. I will not be translating at the U.N. anytime soon.

If I had to write long-form stuff with descriptions of rooms, it would be so boring for me. I like writing dialogue and jokes and situational stuff.

You can get stuff done in New York that you can't in Los Angeles. If you wanted to get some milk and get your shoes repaired and drop something off at the dry cleaner, that's an all-day adventure in Los Angeles. In New York, you can bang that out in half an hour.

I'm in New York part of the time and in L.A. part of the time. That's always been a goal, to be bicoastal in a real way.

I know firsthand how much work has usually gone into a screenplay, so if there's something that rings false or a line that I would think would need a tweak or something, I will think long and hard before I even recommend changing it. In that sense, I'm very faithful to the scripts that I get - if they're good scripts.

I think it's a bad habit for an actor to change scripts because that's not your job. You're not a writer, necessarily - although there are some actors that are good at it.

Certain people want to binge-watch stuff, and they want 10 solid hours of whatever, not realizing that writing 10 hours of quality television is a exhausting experience. Writing an hour and a half is a warm hug compared to writing 10 hours of television.

Say what you want about superhero movies and how much they make and how much they hurt other movies. I don't buy any of it. I just think they're so good.

Writing is harder than acting. I enjoy acting for just the brevity with which you can be in the experience of doing it. Writing is kind of more satisfying in that you're creating a world and doing something that feels bigger, but it's very time consuming and has a higher threshold for failure.

Some of the best movie experiences I've had are when I just walked by the theater and decided to see a movie I hadn't heard anything about and bought a ticket, because that's really the first time you can experience it untainted.

Sure, I considered myself an anarchist; I considered myself - I still am, obviously - distrustful of the government. But I also understand the virtues of civility or democracy and kindness, of course. I wasn't throwing garbage cans through shop windows.

I'm a big believer that the reception is not the endeavor. And what I enjoy about almost all my work is the endeavor, the doing of something.

I love New York street style. Guys and girls in New York know how to dress, and I just think it's super cool, you know.

I've always just considered myself a New Yorker, you know.

I've always found it funny in life when you meet people who are incredibly stupid and incredibly confident at the same time. Actually, there is nothing funnier. I mean, Donald Trump is a perfect example: he's essentially a seven-year-old on a podium.

In a weird way, fashion, which is frivolous to the core, shouldn't be taken seriously, but thank God people do: it makes for great people-watching.

I had this chronic hyperactivity and an inability to focus, so I was forever being moved to another class, with a much smaller group of children - some of them about 18. If I was asked to read a paragraph, this white wall would go up in my head. Still now, I read very slowly and can rarely work out a tip.

If you chase fame, you make bad choices. Being famous isn't interesting.

I was not a great reader. I don't know how to put it any other way.

I read a lot for me. But I'm not one of those people who gets 'The New York Times' book review and runs out and buys 10 books and is done with them and passing them out to friends, you know, two weeks later.

Even to this day, I read things in real time, you know, I don't - like, as if it's being spoken. I can't skim stuff in ways that I know certain people can. I have to sort of hear it in my head to be able to read it.

If you're satirizing something, you're hitting at something that's real and true, and putting it on its head, and we did that with 'Tropic Thunder.'

I can't imagine something worse than scripts being written into a tunnel, thinking, 'I don't know when this ends. I don't know.' It usually ends when people get sick of it, but I think it's great when it gets to end on its own terms.

Whenever I've done anything where I feel like, 'Oh, it would be smart to do that,' it's always been a mistake. Whenever I do the 'Oh, it would be fun to do that,' it's always paid dividends.