Quotes

Just being in the military, you're so violent. We got into fights about just random things all the time. I don't think as aggressively as I did when I was in the Marine Corps.

I'm like a sight gag.

I want to show that theater isn't just talking about feelings or people wearing tights.

I never played sports or got into the whole guy camaraderie of, like, 'I love you, man! Seniors forever!' So suddenly being in the military with these guys who were under these very heightened circumstances, isolated from their families, living this very kind of Greek lifestyle, it changed my life in a really big way.

How do you take what you do as seriously as possible but not so seriously that it ends up inhibiting what you do?

Through theater and acting school, I found a way to articulate myself.

Sophocles was a general: a warrior writing plays about military situations.

Working on 'Girls' opened up a lot of opportunity for me. It's like a dream job. It's a dream.

I auditioned in Chicago for Juilliard and didn't get in. I was basically living in a back room of my parents' house, paying rent and not doing anything with my life. I'd like to say it was patriotic to join the Marines, but it was also that I was doing nothing honorable with my life and spending too much time at McDonald's.

I don't consider myself a celebrity. That would be kind of sad.

We don't understand why we're here, no one's giving us an answer, religion is vague, your parents can't help because they're just people, and it's all terrible, and there's no meaning to anything.

I was an infantry Marine, and there are only so many things you can do when you get out of the military that you can apply your job to. Either a janitor or a cop. I tried to do both of those things because what else are you going to do?

I actually run a non-profit where one of the main objectives is to branch out and get a new audience for the theater. Just because the writing is so good and nothing is more effective than seeing something live and happening right in front of your face, so I definitely want to continue to pursue that.

Writers are so important.

I studied Morse code.

There's something really exciting about playing someone where you're given license to be unpredictable.

I think it's good to live an artful life.

With brain and body, it's great if you have a connection between the two, but when separated, that leads to a lot of conflict.

With 'Girls'... I feel like there's an impulse to try to make it look better or neater or more perfect, and when I watch theater, television, movies, it's always the imperfection I'm always more attracted to.

I don't understand technology, and I'm very scared of it.

My grandpa was in the Navy, but it wasn't something that was expected or planned for me to do.

At Juilliard, suddenly I was reading these great plays that could articulate the ways I was feeling in the Marine Corps, and that felt very therapeutic, by putting words to feelings, in a big way.

Juilliard definitely emphasizes the theater. They don't train - at all really - for film acting. It's mostly process-oriented, pretty much for the stage.

I can tell more about my weaknesses than my strengths.

'Girls' feels very active and stirring a conversation and controversial, and you can't really ask for more as an actor.