“The checks and balances is a way to prevent government from either devolving into an autocratic tyranny or an autocratic mob mentality.”

A lot more locations and you’re able to rely on things that you just can never do on the stage.

The fact that slavery is written into the Constitution is about as entrenched a form of classism as you could possibly imagine.

And they all have something to offer and making the story better and bringing their vision to what you see in the frame.

I don’t think that Washington is a fundamentally bad or corrupt place.

I refuse to buy a PS3 or Xbox for my home for fear that it might ruin my life.

In politics, it’s very theatrical. There’s a lot of stage craft. The campaign is trying to tell a story that they want people to believe in, and candidates are playing the role, like actors, by a creative personae that people will be attracted to.

Film is much more visual, a scene is typically a lot shorter, you’re dealing with a lot more characters.

If you work hard and play by the rules, you’ll have a better life than your parents did, and your children will have a better life than you did.

In Washington, if you’re a congressman or a senator or the President, you make much more money than the average American, but you’d think that if you were the leader of the free world you’d be making major bank, and you don’t.

I think I would cease to accomplish anything productive, would quickly dispense with all human contact, and would very well end up with a nasty case of arthritis in my over-used digits from constant gameplay.

My jobs on campaigns were pretty low on the totem pole – I was an advance man.

At home I mostly stick to online Scrabble, or chess or Risk – games I find far less addictive than the spectacular games created for consoles these days. But, whenever I get the chance I head over to my friend Kyri’s house to play his PS3.

Every director is different. One of the great things about getting to work with so many directors in one TV series is collaborating with different artistic visions and voices.

In the best possible scenario, whenever you get notes from people, they’re good notes, and they see things that you wouldn’t have seen otherwise, and they make you a better writer.

You just have to re-wire your brain when you’re shifting from the stage to the screen, or the silver screen or the HD flat screen.

We all experience power struggles in our lives – at the workplace, with our friends, in our love lives. In a way, we’re all politicians.

The fight training was very extensive, a lot of stretching, a lot of coordination of balance exercises.

If you want to condemn yourself for the mistakes you’ve made, let’s be fair, that means you’ve got to congratulate yourself for all the good things you’ve done. It’s okay to say, “God, I wish I’d done this; yeah, but I did do that.” Then it kind of balances out.

There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized peace.

I’m trying to strike a balance between Bollywood and Hollywood.

There’s always a ying-yang in life. With everybody. There’s evil in all of us. It’s just about how you balance out the evil and the good and having faith in yourself and how you carry yourself.

Involved sentences, crooked, circuitous, and parenthetical, no matter how musically they may be balanced, are prejudicial to a facile understanding of the truth.

It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilizationitself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things we have always carried closest to our hearts.

My career, at the moment, is very exciting, but love comes first because it balances me.