Phoenix: "For me, I'd rather have an intense experience than not."

Phoenix: "Well, I haven't signed anything giving people the right to do anything they want with my image, you know what I mean. I have the ultimate say."

Phoenix: "It's hard for me to put my feelings into words."

Phoenix: "I mean, I don't like sitting at a table with seven or eight people asking me questions and kind of listening to what I'm doing - scrutinizing my thoughts and things like that. I just don't like it. I can't understand how anyone would."

Phoenix: "I always have the fear that, if I don't commit 100 percent to my work, then it's gonna suffer."

Phoenix: "I feel an obligation to set the record straight. Actors that say they're affected by something, that it changes their life, that they take it home with them, they're just trying to get nominated for an Oscar!"

Phoenix: "I don't think one should be comfortable standing on a stage with people applauding and laughing at every stupid thing you say."

Phoenix: "You can take that 'I'm an artiste' stuff to the wrong extreme, too."

Phoenix: "I feel like everything you learn as an actor growing up is wrong. You're supposed to hit your mark, find your light and know your lines. Those are all things that just make things wooden, dull and boring."

Phoenix: "I just I don't feel challenged by acting anymore. I don't enjoy the process anymore."

Phoenix: "I don't really make movies because I want to see my face on a billboard or because I want to get good reviews or have a big box office. That doesn't really matter to me at all."

Phoenix: "The reason I keep making movies is I hate the last thing I did. I'm trying to rectify my wrongs."

Phoenix: "I never prepare. I think that's completely overrated. It's a very simple job. All you have to do is hit this bright mark, stand in the right spot and say the line. So I don't really believe in preparation."

Phoenix: "I guess my experience with some stuff is kind of abstract."

Phoenix: "I think the day that I become comfortable doing interviews and going on talk shows is the day that I don't know what it is to be a human being anymore."

Phoenix: "I don't spend most of my life in front of the media."

Phoenix: "I once told a journalist that girls call me 'Kitten,' but I couldn't have been more sarcastic, and no matter how many times I've said that it was a joke, it still doesn't go away."

Phoenix: "I wouldn't feel satisfied being on set every day doing a romantic comedy - I'd be bored to death."

Phoenix: "The only reason why I would like to be accepted? Because if your movies don't do well, after a while you don't get to make any more movies."

Phoenix: "When I decide to do something, I stick with it, total commitment."

Phoenix: "I'd see child actors and I'd get so jealous, because they're just completely wide open. If you could convince them that something frightening was going to happen, they would actually feel terror. I wanted to feel that so badly. I'd just been acting too long, and it had kind of been ruined for me."

Phoenix: "Might I be ridiculous? Might my career in music be laughable? Yeah, that's possible, but that's certainly not my intention."

Phoenix: "I don't know a single person in life that doesn't have conflict."

Phoenix: "Going out on a stage publicly and not knowing how people are going to react to you - once I experienced that, it made me feel much more comfortable about going into a scene."

Phoenix: "Things are rarely as exciting or dramatic as we make them out to be in the press."

Phoenix: "I have this horrible sense of humor where I think discomfort is funny - partly because I experience discomfort a lot, and it's a way of laughing at it and getting a release."

Phoenix: "Well, I think that you know, I threatened myself with quitting after every movie. But I think everybody does that, right?"

Phoenix: "I don't know why I always get to play these guys who have few redeeming features. But don't knock it. Villains are much more fun."

Phoenix: "My significant other right now is myself, which is what happens when you suffer from multiple personality disorder and self-obsession."

Phoenix: "I love having a master. I have no problem serving my director. That's my job. I want to make them happy."

Phoenix: "If you walk into a room and one hundred people say, 'You are a lovely, beautiful person', who isn't going to be affected by that? But you have to tell yourself not to value that. You have to tell yourself - or at least I do - to not become accustomed to hearing applause in any way, because I think that's dangerous."

Phoenix: "I wish I had fair justification for not being as informed as I should be, but I don't."

Phoenix: "Sometimes a character is really based on research that you do. Other times it's just based on your imagination or perhaps your conversation with the director. Or sometimes all of the above. It depends on the movie and character."

Phoenix: "I don't walk around like I'm a movie star because I don't think of myself as a movie star. People usually don't even notice me."

Phoenix: "I've always loved hip-hop, since I was a kid, that's the music that I loved. I think everyone of our generation kind of fantasized about hip-hop in some ways."

Phoenix: "No, I don't want to talk about River. I have nothing to say about it that I would want to be public."