The happiest moment of my life was probably when my daughter was born.
David Duchovny
The key is to get to know people and trust them to be who they are. Instead, we trust people to be who we want them to be - and when they're not, we cry.
I always dreamt of being a basketball player. A dream that only I believed in.
I'm kind of stupid when it comes to gadgets.
I'm not really a gamer.
I don't believe in a conspiracy to hide the existence of extraterrestrial life.
If you're smart, you'll always be humble. You can learn all you want, but there'll always be somebody who's never read a book who'll know twice what you know.
I lost my virginity when I was 14. And I haven't been able to find it.
I think we all choose our style from the ether and whatever is out there.
Anxiety is part of creativity, the need to get something out, the need to be rid of something or to get in touch with something within.
I love the ocean, wide-open space and trees, but I'm not a gardener or anything like that. I think I may be, eventually. I was raised in the city, so I don't have that skill set, but my heart is more with the dirt than the concrete. It's an unrequited love with nature - a one-way love affair.
Women's fashion is a subtle form of bondage. It's men's way of binding them. We put them in these tight, high-heeled shoes, we make them wear these tight clothes and we say they look sexy. But they're actually tied up.
I wanted to write plays. I was at Yale graduate school at the time for English literature, not for acting... I liked the idea of collaboration, and I thought if I'm gonna write plays, I should learn something about speaking the lines that I might try to write.
I feel I have to work hard to nurture whatever talent I have as an actor. I feel like it's not natural to me. So I don't take it for granted... What I think is my natural ability - which is writing - I think I totally take that for granted.
I'm half Jewish, half Scottish. It's hard for me to buy anything.
'The X-Files,' as I recall, we didn't know really what we were until the middle of the first year. You know, so if we'd been cancelled, you get cancelled before you mature into what it is you can actually be, which is too bad.
Every day I try to do breathing exercises, meditation, and yoga. These things sound awfully cliche, but they help me slow down and try to point to a truth.
Humility is considered an un-masculine quality.
Well, I still write poetry, but I wouldn't call myself a poet.
One of the nice things about acting is that it allows you to open up to the other people within you.
People always love and respect characters who speak the truth, even if the truth hurts.
'Duch' means spirit and 'ovny' is kind of the adjectival ending, so the word itself means spiritual. It's my father's name, obviously. He took the 'H' out because he was tired of people saying Duchovny, but he never did it legally. When my parents divorced, my mother, to my father, put the 'H' back in.
For hundreds of years, that was the major form of entertainment: The grown-ups sat around and watched the kids play. Now they sit around and watch the television. The actors are the kids.
I understand the self-loathing and the resentment, and the discipline that it takes to sit down in front of a typewriter or computer every single day, whether it's going well or not going well.
There are certain things I learned when I first started learning about acting, to try and place the character physically and emotionally. And the way you place them emotionally is often with humor.
I love dogs. They live in the moment and don't care about anything except affection and food. They're loyal and happy. Humans are just too damn complicated.
Most journalists expect me to answer all their questions about aliens and spaceships.
I don't mind close-ups, I like them, but they're kind of forceful - you see a lot, you get a lot of information in a close-up. There's less mystery.
I just spend my money on the essentials. Just basically food and shelter.
It's not someone else's responsibility to honor my marriage. It's my responsibility.
If you have Darwin, Christ and Nietzsche, they're all going to talk at once. You need somebody who listens.
At one time there were voiceover artists, now there are celebrity voiceover artists. It's unfortunate because these people need the money less than the voiceover artist.
Fame does lead to money, which I don't have a close relationship with. I'm the kind of guy who never sees the money - it all goes somewhere else. I don't understand it, I don't like to deal with it. I have a fear of not having it, because I grew up without it.
People think celebrities don't have to worry about human things like sickness and death and rent. It's like you've traveled to this Land of Celebrity, this other country.
I think there are ways in which shows can pop their heads up a little bit in the morass of everything you can watch.
I had to work in one of the most beautiful ski resorts in the world for almost three weeks. Pity me.
If my work was good enough, I would never have to do publicity.
I love the Lower East Side.
I envisioned that as my life: staying in academia to make a living and then taking summers off to write my novels.
You can go through life and actually speak your mind and do it in an articulate fashion and with a really intelligent point of view.
On the one hand, people think they own kids; they feel that they have the right to tell the kids what to do. On the other hand, people envy kids. We'd like to be kids our whole lives. Kids get to do what they do. They live on their instincts.
Part of being an actor is letting things come about organically as opposed to forcing them.
When I grew up, I was in Manhattan the whole time. But my kids have been all over the world.
I don't like the idea of being eaten by a shark. I like to swim in the ocean, and I think much more about sharks than anyone should. I really resent the fact that my oceangoing experiences are ruined by 'Jaws.'
I've made so many mistakes. But it is my feeling that you learn from failures, so I welcome them as often as I can.
I don't make decisions based on money.
I really enjoy taking an outdoor shower.
I don't know how anybody gets better at anything aside from doing it.
I don't want to know what happens in any movie that I go to see.
My entire life has been an attempt to get back to the kind of feelings you have on a field. The sense of brotherhood, the esprit de corps, the focus - there being no past or future, just the ball. As trite as it sounds, I was happiest playing ball.
