Let’s all wallow in some grief and celebrate a great actor, shall we? Here’s what some people are saying online.

The Atlantic‘s Derek Thompson calls him “the greatest actor of his generation”:

An actor this good at talking should not be so good at silence. An actor so good at silence shouldn’t be this good at talking. In the delicate art of negotiating rest stops, commanding crescendos, and unleashing fortes, there wasn’t a more precise conductor of performances than Hoffman.

Bilge Ebiri talks about some of his best performances at New York‘s the Vulture:

Maybe that’s why this bewildering, tragic death hurts so much: because he feels like someone we knew, even if we only knew him from a movie screen. And because he felt like someone who understood us at our weakest, most fragile moments.

David Thompson considers some of his roles at the New Republic, including Moneyball:

The film is too smug, and too cut and dried. But Hoffman seemed to know and convey how far Beane simply didn’t understand baseball—which was and is an archaic, stupid game. If I’d been Art Howe I would have looked at Moneyball and just marveled at where such genius and understanding had come from.

Josh Levin of Slate points to a favourite scene on the Brow Beat blog:

In this scene from Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous, Hoffman calls on his vast reserves of empathy to offer wise counsel to Patrick Fugit’s William Miller. The most important lesson: “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we’re uncool.”