Dinklage: "Anything that opens up people's perceptions a bit is good."

Dinklage: "Any swagger is just defense. When you're reminded so much of who you are by people - not a fame thing, but with my size, constantly, growing up - you just either curl up in a corner in the dark or you wear it proudly, like armor or something. You can turn it on its head and use it yourself before anybody else gets a chance."

Dinklage: "I don't like people being cautious and tentative and choosing their words carefully around me because I'm a dwarf."

Dinklage: "I have a need to always make people laugh. I have a desperate need. I love a great sense of humor. The people I sort of surround myself with have that."

Dinklage: "When people are infected by my charm, they don't see my size. My piercing deep blue eyes are distracting."

Dinklage: "Call me a midget, but just be real. I am all for correct terms, but please don't tiptoe around feelings. Don't be too careful, because that shuts you off from people."

Dinklage: "You want your privacy as a human being."

Dinklage: "Every person my size has a different life, a different history. Different ways of dealing with it. Just because I'm seemingly O.K. with it, I can't preach how to be O.K. with it. I don't think I still am O.K. with it. There's days when I'm not."

Dinklage: "I have a big cynical side to me."

Dinklage: "I love working with the same actors repeatedly. That happens a lot. It's kind of inevitable, especially if you work with the same writers and directors and you start to form a company of actors. You gravitate towards each other."

Dinklage: "I spend my nights just sitting and reading a book and drinking my tea and walking my dog. That's about as exciting as my life gets."

Dinklage: "A lot of parts written for people of my size, dwarfs, are either foolish idiots or, like, these sages that are all-knowing, and they're very, sort of, come-to-them-for-answers."

Dinklage: "I don't socialize. I'm kind of a hermit. The life of an actor can be very lonely."

Dinklage: "I was opposed to doing TV for a long time because I thought the quality of writing wasn't very strong, as opposed to film, but there's been a shift in term of the quality of scripts. HBO has attracted a tremendous amount of great writing talent."

Dinklage: "I'm a private person in many ways."

Dinklage: "I think 'No' is a very powerful word in our business that is very hard to use early on in your career. But I also think I was pretty arrogant when I was younger... I used that word maybe too much, but it did help me with finding roles that I did like.

Dinklage: "You'd be surprised how condescending people can be."

Dinklage: "It's a shame how a lot of actors use theater as a stepping stone to film and television work; I think it shouldn't be treated that way. Maybe it's narcissism or something. I think we should always go back to it. I try and do a play a year, and I think that's really helped me."

Dinklage: "Dwarves are still the butt of jokes. It's one of the last bastions of acceptable prejudice."

Dinklage: "Women on the whole are often not as shallow as men are. They can be, but they cut through things a little more easily than men do in terms of that superficial stuff."

Dinklage: "I was a sullen kid who smoked cigarettes and wore black every day, and I went to a school that was lacrosse players and Izods."

Dinklage: "Sometimes, when the material is really good, you put expectations on yourself to make it the best possible show. You're not just serving up the regular hash and doing your job and going home."

Dinklage: "I've felt like an outsider. I've had to struggle."

Dinklage: "Bad guys are complicated characters. It's always fun to play them. You get away with a lot more. You don't have a heroic code you have to live by."

Dinklage: "Animals used for food are treated like unfeeling machinery."