Zach Braff

When you are writing a script, you can’t help but stop and daydream about which actors are going to play the parts, and I kind of imagined Natalie Portman. Not just because she is beautiful, because obviously she is, but she is a wonderful actress who hasn’t had a chance in a long time to show the world how talented she is.

I love “The Office”. I think it’s the funniest thing – Ricky Gervais is possibly the funniest person I’ve seen in my entire life.

I’m kind of jealous of the life I’m supposedly leading.

[On Hollywood’s initial response to his Garden State script] Everyone said no. Everyone with a date book and a phone in Los Angeles said no.

My mother’s a psychologist, my stepfather’s a psychologist, my stepmother is a therapist and my dad’s a lawyer. So it was all prominent in my life. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t know someone on some form of prescription medicine.

I love Scrubs. It’s the best day job in the world.

I aspire to be Jack Nicholson. I love every single mannerism. I used to try and be him in virtually everything I did, I don’t know why. I watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest when I was about 13, and I dressed like him. I tried to do his accent. I did everything like him. I think it’s kind of stuck with me.

I’m a woman now.

[on Stephen Merchant] He’s eight foot tall, has stupid glasses, awful hair, but it makes me look good, which is why he’s in the series. We look so strange on screen together as well. The height difference is ridiculous. I want people to know that he is a freak and I’m the normal one. Don’t look at this and go, ‘What? Didn’t know Ricky was a dwarf.’ I’m not. He’s the weird one.

I started working on trying to sound like June from the very beginning.

Politics and prostitution have to be the only jobs where inexperience is considered a virtue. In what other profession would you brag about not knowing stuff? I’m not one of those fancy Harvard heart surgeons. I’m just an unlicensed plumber with a dream and I’d like to cut your chest open. The crowd cheers.

I think if Keith Moon was here today and you asked him to recall most of his early life or most of his life, he wouldn’t be able to recall it.

I don’t have a sound bite for everything.

Whenever you’re scared of something, don’t let that define you. We all feel it, but step up.

There are always generic terms like ‘Americana’, but there are no boundaries as to where it can go.

I think the world has too many actresses.

You’re better off being a brick layer if you’re going to play guitar than a sheet metal worker.

I only cook when I’m in love.

No one to talk with, all by myself. No one to walk with, but I’m happy on the shelf.

At the end of the day, I just do my job. I love my art. But I genuinely want to change the world. I’m very generous, and I really want people to see that I am – that’s really it.

To rock isn’t necessarily to cavort.