• 1986 - on the set of "Mosquito Coast"
  "I've been around the movie business, so I can play it cool and all that, but when people are different they have that off thing about them. Their whole presence is just a little innocent, I think."

• 1987 - actually about "Jimmy Reardon"
  "The message is 'slow down and think about what you're doing before you do it. Weigh the pros and cons, what's best for you'. Of course you can get paranoid analysing each situation you're faced with. Sometimes you've got to go with your instinct."

• April 1988 - ... blatant case of "And then I know why I felt connected to you, stranger" for me - and he was just 17
  "Sometimes I wish I wasn't as conscious as I am. It would be so much easier."

• 1989 - about his early interviews
  "Oh, oh, I just find them misleading. I don't recognize myself... I sound kind of like... bright boy, teenage messiah, health fanatic... uh. Save the World... hippy-dippy background... the whole collage reads false. It's the terms that are wrong. I mean... Save the World."

• 1990 -
  "Where am I coming from? Who cares? Do I need to know where they're coming from to get along with them? No. I accept them. But I come from a place that is foreign, a place where no other eyes see..."

• 1991 -
  "Music is in my wrists, in my fingers, in my soul. I feel very strongly about myself as a composer, more so than as a musical performer. I'm not really into live stuff, I'm not a front man. Music is a public hobby to me."

• 1991 - talking about "My own private Idaho"
  "It strikes me as strange that anyone could have any moral objection to someone else's sexuality. It's like telling someone how to clean their house. Speaking for myself, I had no second thoughts about playing the part."

• 1991 - about the L.A. scene
  "It's really designed, I think, to strip you and blend you. It's like feeling like the invisible man. You just stand there, and you start disintegrating, and you can't see yourself, and you just feel like you're being absorbed into this big blob of glitter. I just can't hang."

• 1991 - asked how he spent his spare time
  "Life is multi-layered and there's no way I could do my life justice in one pat answer."

• 1993 - in his last interview
  " Ideally I would stay silent as River. That's the reason why, for a long time, I've said the opposite of what I really thought. In interviews, I've also played characters that I wasn't. I've lied and often contradicted myself to dumbfound people. It's all over now, because I have nothing left to hide. Eventually, I'm quite an ordinary person."

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