[on the backlash surrounding his and Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction incident] I probably got ten percent of the blame. I think America's probably harsher on women, and I think America is, you know, unfairly harsh on ethnic people.

Jimmy Fallon just can't help himself. He's a brilliant comedian. A talented musician. A spot-on impersonator. Jimmy has redefined and recharged late-night television with a genuine excitement and energy that gets under your skin. That's probably because watching you laugh might be the thing that makes Jimmy most happy. His lightning wit - mixed with a kindness you don't normally find in comedy - is what makes you feel so comfortable having him him in your home every night. And, no matter where the joke goes, the audience feels like they are in on it too. That's because Jimmy likes to share the moment. He can't help himself. And neither can we.

Film is much more communal in both good and bad ways. Everyone talks about other people more, but then again no one in music gossips much because everyone's so incredibly narcissistic that they only want to talk about themselves.

[on appearing nude in Friends with Benefits (2011)] It was fun, but I can't say I'm going to be butt-naked in a movie again. I only did it because I'm young now and everything's where its' supposed to be. I figured this is the time, before gravity gets the best of me.

[on marriage] I think the mistake is that people commit to who that person is right then and not the person they're going to become. The art of staying together is changing together.

[on Tony Scott] His movies made growing up more fun for me.

[2011] I know the movies I love, and I'd like to make movies like them. Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), The Goonies (1985), Reds (1981), The Music Man (1962). Seeing Fight Club (1999) changed the way I watch movies. It was so much smarter than anything I'd ever seen before, which is why working with David Fincher was such a bucket-list move. Making movies that can touch people the way any of those films did would be all I could hope for.

[2011] Prince, who, to me, is the greatest musician who has ever lived. He keeps producing, keeps writing, keeps making unbelievable music-all because he's true to his passion...Everything he says, every note he sings, it's just like, man, that guy is so far ahead of the rest of us. One of my best experiences onstage was at his house during a party. Somebody came up to me and said, "Prince would love if you could sing something with the band." I said okay. I was kind of drunk, so I was like, "Let's do the Stones." Then we did "Miss You."

(2011, on the height of boy bands) It was a time: the concerts, the fans, the music. Plus, it wasn't just us (N'Sync). It was that whole factory we came out of-us, the Backstreet Boys and Britney-we were all together. It was bigger than any one of us and bigger than any of the groups. Everybody was selling a gazillion records at the same time. You couldn't keep what we were doing on the shelves. It was bigger than bubblegum. Sometimes I think back on the time we did five nights at Giants Stadium. That was the moment I just looked around and thought, 'There's nowhere for this to go but down. It's never going to get bigger than this'.

(2011) The first half of my 20s I felt I had to achieve, achieve, achieve. I think a lot of men do this. I'm not saying just because I turned 30 I don't battle with this. I still battle with it. But in my 20s I had to do everything. I needed everybody to understand me and respect what I was doing. I remember putting out my second album [2006's FutureSex/LoveSounds]. When I put out the first song, "SexyBack," radio thought I was a joke. I couldn't let that go, so I started calling radio program directors. I'm pretty tenacious like that. I was like, "This is my record. Give it a chance." There wasn't any of my signature falsetto or anything. I'd say, "I know it doesn't sound like me, but just please give the record a two-week period or even a one-week period. Just let the music get out there. If the callback is good, keep playing it." I was that relentless. During the second half of my 20s I started to ask myself, What am I doing? What have I built, and how do I continue that for the next 10 years? For some reason, in the past year I've done so much work I feel as though it's backfired. I'm looking around now and I'm like, Where am I running? I've been running so hard for so long. I've seen the inside of more arenas than your average basketball player. Like I said, I've had that experience on tour sometimes when I think, I don't feel like going onstage. I have no energy right now. I'm sick, I barely have a voice. But you do it anyway. You feel obligated to go out because all those ­people showed up. You end up performing. But at some point in my life I wish I had learned to say no. From the beginning of my career, I was a guy who said yes all the time to everything.

[2011] I grew up in a small town, and because I started working when I was 10, I was kind of looked at as more of an oddity. I would sing at the talent shows at schools and go around town doing different things, but it was more like, "That kid's a freak." You hear a lot of stories about child prodigies, child actors or ­people whose parents pushed them really hard. But I was the one begging for the stage. That made me kind of stand out in good ways and in weird ways. Not a lot of 10-year-old Caucasian kids were running around Millington, Tennessee, singing Stevie Wonder and Al Green songs, which were the songs I felt most connected to.

(2011, on if he smokes marijuana) Absolutely...The only thing pot does for me is it gets me to stop thinking. Sometimes I have a brain that needs to be turned off. Some people are just better high.

(2011, on what he would do if he got 100 percent anonymity for one day) Oh God, probably just go for a walk somewhere. I'd go walk around Paris or Rome. Or if I was really anonymous, maybe I'd do something outrageous like commit arson or rob someone or find all those fuckers who wait outside my house and go outside their houses and stalk them. A day of anonymity would be cool, though. Just to go to a store and not be hassled.

(2011, on Friends with Benefits (2011)) I did go on a diet for that movie, which mostly came down to not drinking as much beer. And you know, beer is good, so that was hard. I'm pretty thin anyway, but I didn't want to look like a meathead. I was like, I'm about to be 30, and I'm going to be naked on camera. If I'm going to do this, I'm going to train pretty hard. In the end, I just did more cardio, and I pumped up the stuff I already do throughout the year, such as playing sports. I like basketball and golf and snowboarding, and I do them pretty fucking intensely.

(2011, on his work ethic) I think people sometimes don't pay enough attention to what they do. I've done well, but the reason is pretty simple: I've worked my ass off. Anything I've done well has taken many, many hours of preparation. And then the trick, of course, is making that work look invisible. The toughest thing a performer can do is make it look as if it comes easy. You have to devote yourself 100 percent when you're figuring stuff out, whether it's with sports or music-or movies, which has been the main focus for me lately.

(2011) I feel like a rookie in the movie business, that's for sure. Maybe a little bit of an outsider, too, since I came to it from music. But I think that's fair. I don't know that I've done a huge body of work that would warrant my not feeling like that. Then again, this past year has certainly opened up a new chapter as far as acting, and I'm grateful for that.

(2011) Honestly, when you're making a movie, you never say, "Oh, this one's going to suck and go straight to video". When you're in it, you think you're doing the best work you can do. You're surrounded by people who are working hard. Everybody's hopeful. It's only a year later when you realize, "Wait, what was that exactly?" If anything shifted for me, though, it was the realization of how important it is to work with smart people. That takes a lot of the guesswork out. Just being in the room with David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin for my first reading for The Social Network (2010), I knew things would be different - even though I felt I had totally botched the audition. I botch a lot of auditions. But, the next thing I knew, I was on the set. It was surreal. This may sound strange, but I don't have aspirations to be a movie star. I make movies because I enjoy the creative process. Just to work with people like Fincher and ­Sorkin or to trade lines with great actors has been more surreal than anything I've accomplished in my music career.

(2011, on *NSYNC's height of fame) Man, I could tell you a thousand stories. I remember girls running after the buses in the hundreds. We'd do an open-air festival in Germany and there'd be 60,000 people there. We'd finish playing, the band would be putting the gear up, and we would be trying to do a quick out, which is what they call it when you leave the stage before the band stops playing. We'd get on the bus and there would be 250 to 400 girls waiting to run after us. I distinctly remember Joey Fatone singing the theme song from The Goonies while this particular pack of girls was running. It was just crazy...I hate to disappoint you, but I was the youngest one in the group, so the other guys were getting more of that action, and they were protective of me. I think I was the one who cared about what we were doing onstage. My role was, we'd come offstage every night and get a DVD of the show, just like an athlete watching tape from a game. We'd get on the bus, and I'd go, "Okay, here's what we did right; here's what we did wrong," and we'd fix it for the next day. But yeah, the girl stuff definitely was a heavy part of it, and it would play with your mind. I remember looking down once-we were playing Madison Square Garden for an HBO special-and this girl put her arm out. She had a mural of me tattooed along her whole arm. I just remember looking at it and thinking, 'Holy shit, that's never going to come off'.

[on Friends with Benefits (2011)] The bedroom scenes were funny because we got to have conversations and banter while we were in the middle of the act. I think the audience can feel more comfortable because everyone has been in those situations, but no one talks about them. So seeing a couple who aren't a couple actually talking about [sex] as it is happening made for a lot of funny, situational humor.

"Golf" is the only four-letter word I don't say when I'm playing it.

I think we created the only dry-humping scene in cinema history. There's nothing wrong with a good jean jam, but also the both of us felt collectively that we had a responsibility. It's really a public service announcement for safe sex.

[on making Bad Teacher (2011)]: After the first week of rehearsal and the first orgy, it all came together.

[about *NSYNC] I don't regret anything that I've done with this group. I think that when people find something that they love to do they make sacrifices to do it.

When I'm not on stage, I'm kind of shy. If you see me and I don't say much, don't think I'm not taking in what you have to say. I'm just not a big talker.

Everyone wants to know about my spirituality, and it's like, Tthat's mine!"

I don't feel guilty about success. You can't feel guilty about aspiring to be good at something.

[on who he would date] Pretty is cool, but it's not really about looks for me. It's more about personality. I like a girl with a good sense of humor, who's humble and sensitive.

I'm a perfectionist. I can't help it, I get really upset with myself if I fail in the least.

[about love] True love, to me, is when she's the first thought that goes through your head when you wake up and the last thought that goes through your head before you go to sleep.

[about the music industry] I can give you my personal opinion: Love the music, hate the business. It's a screwball business and there are a lot of players who will straight-up lie to you.

[about music] I think music will always be a big part of my life. I can't go five minutes without singing, sometimes unconsciously. And people stare at me, and I'm wondering why they're staring, and then I'm realizing that I'm belting out a tune.

[about girls] A lot of girls have cheated on me in the past, so it's hard for me to trust. But once I fall, I fall hard.

[in 2002, about fame] All you can do as an artist is do what you think is an extension of you. You put down on paper . . . who you are. That's what being an artist is all about. And when it gets done, you don't look back at it and say, "Oh, I could have done that better".

I kiss people with my soul. I don't kiss them with my mouth.

[on the Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction" incident] I am sorry if anyone was offended by the wardrobe malfunction during the halftime performance.

England is the first country that I've had a #1 album in, so it is now officially my home away from home.

[interview in Rolling Stone magazine about Britney Spears] I may not ever get over her. I really do still love that girl.